Aug 03, 2009 05:31 PM
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It’s a paradox that my vote for the country’s most inept private organisation would go to a communications company; Reliance. Shortly before I moved to my new home near Udaipur, a young sales rep from that company approached me, wielding a phone.
This REMOTE PHONE, he said, would answer my problem of having no nearby telephone cable, since it would pick up a signal from the local transmitter. And it did! We visited every corner of the house and the garden, and my signal maintained a healthy five bars. I ordered this little wonder and I was so thrilled with it that I convinced my new neighbour to purchase one too.
For the internet I decided on a costly ‘Freedom by Night’ plan which ran on a dial-up basis, but after a few weeks the salesman reappeared with an appliance called a data card that seems a better and cheaper solution. The salesman asked me to write a letter to Reliance cancelling the ‘Freedom by Night’ plan. This I did and he took it away along with the order for the data card. After ten days with the data card I decided to upgrade the plan from the limited download I had opted for to a more cost-effective unlimited download. I found out a week later that they were still charging me for excess downloading as related to the limited download plan. It took several calls and a visit to their offices to finally lay the limited download plan to rest.
After a high wind just a few months later, the signals on both the phone and the data card dropped to one bar; and then disappeared altogether. We were cut off from the rest of the world, and I couldn’t even phone Reliance to report the fact. I borrowed a cell phone from a friend and made my complaint but Reliance suggested that my problem was because I was living in the countryside. “Yes, but when I bought the phone and the data card, my signal was excellent” I said. I complained to the original salesman and he promised to look into the issue and call me back. As far as I know he didn’t attend to the former and certainly he didn’t call back. After that he blacklisted my friend’s cell number and wouldn’t take my calls.
Next I contacted the Reliance call centre number (in Bombay). After pressing a series of numbers to pick my way through the system to presumably the correct desk, I was asked various questions from a script. The female voice suggested that there was no problem that they knew of and she merely suggested that I download ‘Net Booster’ and that it was probably a computer virus causing my problem. The logic behind my response that the telephone’s signal was also very weak fell on deaf ears. I called out a computer engineer who went through my computer and pronounced it ‘clean’. After paying him, I called Reliance to tell them, but invisible shoulders were shrugged and nothing happened until about a week later when the signal miraculously went up to full strength again. This formed a pattern. Every time a wind blew, my signal dropped and I complained. One day two engineers appeared. One of them told me frankly that the transmitter in the city was at fault. This was what I suspected of course, but for the first and only time, a Reliance official was honest enough to admit it, and in fact from that time on Reliance denied anything could be wrong with their transmitter. I have never bothered contacting the underlings since I managed to get the Udaipur boss’s number. Eventually he grew so tired of my regular complaints that he offered a special booster to be fitted to my roof. I gladly accepted this and about seven or eight men arrived one day to fit it.
“You’ll never have any problems again” Reliance assured me. And it was true for about two weeks. Meanwhile a phone bill arrived. It was one of the very few that has ever arrived since our postman doesn’t see any reason to make regular deliveries. One of my staff pointed to the long list of charges, and told me that we were being charged for calls never made. Peering down through a magnifying glass at the tiny print, I saw columns of charges; each for Rs.9.12. These were for calls made to Nepal, each of a duration of about a second! Worse was to come. On scrutinising the rest of the bill I discovered that Reliance were STILL deducting Rs.400 per month for the Freedom by Night (dial-up connection) plan that I had cancelled in writing 21 months before! I was Rs.8400 out-of-pocket. I struggled into the city one hot day. I sat with a posse of managers and explained the inaccuracies and the managers promised that they would attend to it. After several days, I was informed that Reliance could find no trace of my cancellation letter (with the gross inefficiency I have come to expect from Reliance, why wasn’t I surprised?). They also said that I should have noticed that the plan hadn’t been cancelled, but although they had a point, I said that we hardly ever received a bill and that even if we did, I could hardly read the tiny print.
Reliance grudgingly agreed to waive my latest phone bill amounting to Rs.2700. The excess was to remain my loss. This vastly wealthy company were totally unwilling to admit any liability in their own exceedingly poor in-house communications; categorically denying that they had lost the cancellation letter of the Freedom by Night plan. When I complained to the Reliance boss of Udaipur, he told me that HIS bosses in Jaipur were not willing to give me a full refund, and besides, look how generous Reliance were with providing my booster! Hey?
So that booster delivered a strong signal for approximately 14 days. One day I noticed that the red LED on it had died and I called Reliance. Nothing happened. About a week later I called Reliance again and this time they contacted the contractor to repair my booster. Two guys arrived and took away a part, promising that by the next morning it would be returned, fixed. That was 4 weeks ago. My signals on the phone and data card have been at one bar for the last seven days and I’m still waiting! Meanwhile the only section of Reliance that is100% efficient in its timekeeping is the billing department. For days leading up to my payment day, I’m bombarded with messages reminding me of the fact. Well done Reliance. I nominate you with a Gold, Silver and Bronze as the most inefficient company in India.
