Poor network and bad service. Review on Idea Mobile Operator

I have been SPICE (now IDEA) customer since 2002. But their network coverage has remained poor to average. They dont have a national presence so roaming is a serious problem. If you travel, you will see other provider's networks with whom idea has a tie-up. My consistent experience is that roaming networks are very unreliable. Once I was trying to urgently reach my home in Blr from Dahanu (near Mumbai) and I was getting a network busy for over 12 hours which my signal was showing full. I have to use another phone (airtel).

In Bangalore the nw is ok (not very great). The worse part is their customer service. They probably have some of the most untrained service staff over there. Many times their number 198 (complaint number)'s option 9 (talk to customer service executive) simply makes u wait for 30 seconds before dropping the call. Another number 12345 works but is charged at 50p/3minutes to talk to the customer support staff. The IVR too doesn't work.

For example I wanted to activate 3G on my phone and selected the 'activate 3G on ur phone' option. The IVR told me my request has been taken. When I talked to support staff, he it takes 12 hours for the activation. I called after 12 hours and another rude guy picked up saying there has been no request from you and said once he takes the request now, it will take 24 hours to activate. Carzy...

Now suddenly y-day, they disabled all toll-free number services. On asking the service staff, the guy says its not blocked and asked me to wait for half hour. When I called after half hour to complain that its still down, the cust support option gave me an IVR - "unable to connect to support staff, please call after 24 hours". I laughed at myself for being with them for 10 years... Bye-Bye Idea, I am done with u... thanks God there is number portability...