Mar 30, 2011 01:08 AM
12023 Views
I'm a resident of Mumbai city and have always thought of state-owned enterprises as inefficient and incompetent. After the recent MNP facility was announced, a HUGE number of mobile subscribers flocked to Vodafone. As a result, Vodafone is now the worst service provider in Mumbai. No jokes. I always held Vodafone in high esteem right from their Hutchison Max days.
I had a very old Vodafone number which I had retained because some people just couldn't forget it. I decided to apply for MNP and sent requests to several Mobile service operators in mumbai. MTNL, Idea, Tata Docomo, and Reliance.
The very next day I got a call from MTNL explaining the MNP process and the documents needed. No sign of private players yet. Oh wait a minute! I had specified that I wanted to use their Prepaid services! That's why none of the private players bothered to respond.
Since I was going to use the mobile in my office in a fixed location, I really didn't mind if the network was bad across the city as long as I got decent network in my office. So I decided to dive in with the Dolphins. I went to my nearest Telephone exchange, filled up a form, showed the original documents, submitted copies of my documents, signed and paid Rs.10/-. I chose to opt for their Trump prepaid service as I didn't relish the thought of spending hours arguing any billing discrepancies with these govt. employees. I mean seriously! If Reliance and Airtel couldn't get better customer service staff, should we expect our PSU telecom operator that is surviving on a ventilator to do better?
Reliance, TataDocomo, and IDEA hadn't called me up even 3 days after requesting a call back on their website. Could they be busy handling the gazillion MNP requests they have received? To be fair to them, they did call back after 3 days, but Reliance and IDEA did not want any Prepaid MNP migrants. They prefer Post-paid accounts because the Average Revenue Per User is much higher in Post-paid accounts. Plus, with Post-paid you have the choice of playing with the customer's bill in as many ways as you can and slap hefty fines at will. TataDocomo couldn't care much since their network is notoriously bad.
So getting back to the Trump SIM card: Well, having paid Rs.10/- the lady handed a SIM card to me. A few days later I got an SMS from Vodafone saying that my MNP request had been accepted. The next day the SIM stopped working. For the next 2 days, my very old mobile number turned into a "Number not in use" whenever someone called me. But after the mandatory 7 day period from submission of MNP form etc., the new Trump SIM started working.
I have been using it for a good couple of weeks and have faced no network congestion or network error issues. These are issues that I Still face on my other Vodafone number. I haven't bothered to check their 3G services because thats not my priority. Maybe someday I will check it out.
So, to sum it all up : Go for a mobile service provider who will be around for a long time and who doesn't depend on fleecing you to make a living. Sure, PSU telecom service providers may be inefficient, but they're catching up to the private players coming up with competitive tariffs, and decent service levels.
Oh and a week after using the Trump SIM card, a lady from MTNL called me again to ask if I was facing any problems and if I was satisfied with the services! This coming from an organisation that was notoriously sloppy!
