Sep 25, 2006 10:31 AM
10177 Views
So I made the biggest and the most foolish decision of my entire life - I trusted this obscure ISP run by a small team of amateur cablewallahs, who call themselves "Spearhead Broadband Pvt. Ltd."
The old adage goes - Learn from one anothers mistakes. I am going to help you understand today why you should never opt for a Spearhead Internet connection, not even if they are the last ISP remaining on the face of this planet. This means that if you are opting for Exattnet, Sify or Spearhead (all these ISPs have partnered with Spearhead for western suburbs like Khar, Bandra, Juhu, etc.), you are in BIG trouble!!
Consider this:
[1] ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE -- Spearhead is run by a small group of bhaiyas who are only good at throwing cables from one roof to another. I must add that they are exceptionally well equipped in this trade. They completed my installation in under 2 days flat and my Internet was up and running!! Now thats where they begin the process of torturing you - once they have encashed your 2500 rupees for installation and 3 months advance (1800 rupees for 64 kbps unlimited download).
Spearhead has the worst call center in the world -- They have two phone numbers that are continuously engaged -- you must dial at least 30 times on both numbers to get through, and when you do, the same lady will pickup the phone (I guess one customer service lady for 1500 buildings that they have wired is what these cheaters call customer service). And her standard answer to every support problem is this -- "Sir main apne boss ko batadoongi aapki problem kya hai". I have found even the worst support calls to MTNL to be much more prompt and courteous.
On better days, she has another quick fix to every problem -- There is this one man who single handedly controls the entire organization. This superman goes by the name "Illiyas". On extremely lucky days, you will be transferred by this lady to superman "Illiyas". More often than not, he will behave like he is the president of America, as he knows that no one else at Spear Head can solve the problem except him.
This is bang on line with the response I get soemtimes from this lady, "Sir Illiyas gaon gaya hai". I am now compelled to wait for this bhaiya to return from his rural escapade so that I can get my Internet up and running again.
[2] GET READY FOR WEEKS OF CONTINUOUS DISCONNECTION
Its been two weeks since I and two others in my locality have experienced zero connectivity (We all share the same switch in Khar). I am not talking about one or two days, but two ENTIRE WEEKS!! And we have paid 600 rupees each in advance for the month, which makes it a collective loss of 900 for all of us!! I must have called and lodged at least 50 complaints and am sure that the others did the same. We were always met with the same reply, "Sir Balaji apke ghar me aaJAYEGA"
After two weeks (i had decided to sell their switch by then and recover my lost advance for three months), I was surprised to see Balaji at my door. My heart rejoiced and lept! Balaji aaGAYA!!!!!
And he fixed the Internet informing me that there was a major fault in my area (My question to Mr. Riyaz, the owner of Spearhead Internet Cheaters Pvt. Ltd. is, "if you can manage to install a new connection in two days, cant you fix one in under two weeks??"
[3] GET READY TO SUFFER DUE TO LACK OF COMPUTERIZATION
As absurd as this sounds, Spearhead does not have any computerized billing (No website, no email tickets, no database of customers, no records, in short -- everything runs on pen and paper).
After paying three months in advance, every single month my internet would be deactivated by the server administrator with a message saying "Your usage has expired for the month". After callign their office, they would take another 1-2 days to renew it, giving me the cheeky and horrible excuse that the server is unaware that I have paid for three months!!!!
I had to call them at the end of every month to activate my internet, even though I had already paid for three months in advance !!!!!!!!!!
This means that there is absolutely no system at Spearhead!!
[4] THEIR SALES PROFESSIONALS ARE UNDERPAID AND HIGHLY FRUSTRATED
Since more than 50 calls I made fell on deaf years and Spearhead's Man Friday, Illiyas was still dancing around trees with Basanti in his gaon, I called the sod who sold me the Internet package in the first place -- the cheeky Spearhead salesman who had come to my place with that voter form of a look alike registration form in his hand.
Do you know what he told me? He said that Riyaz and his company are a big bunch of cheaters and I should just go ahead and purchase Iqara instead of wasting any more time and money. He said that they would never refund my three months subscription even if the internet had been down for all 90 days.
[5] DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT
If you still think you will get better service, be blind enough to pay your hard earned money to these cheaters.
I am thinking of writing to the customer grieviance cell to inform them of my plight. It is time someone framed some rules to protect Internet users so that we do not get cheated by these gangs of robbers called cabblewallah turned ISPs.
