Tata IndiCON: Redefining terrible service. Review on Tata Indicom ADSL Broadband

My woes with Tata Indicom consist of two phases, and I am almost certain it is not over yet.

First, there was the broadband connection. It was activated about two months after I applied for it. During this period I called everyone in Tata Indicom, wrote emails ranging from desperate to sarcastic to threatening action through a consumer forum but to no avail. Life during this period was a story of unreturned calls, anger, stress and everything else.

Finally, the connection arrived.

And after all the horror stories I heard it was pleasant to get a reasonably quick internet connection. Yes there were a few woes every now and then - the connection would abruptly terminate and the call centre would be totally unaware of it. When I lodged a complaint about sudden loss of connection (presumably some server packed up), I got a follow up call after three days, never mind that the thing fixed itself in a few hours.

And then came the bill - or it didn't, actually. Concerned at not having received a bill, I sent them a mail and then called them and voila, a bill appeared in my online Tata Indicom Broadband account (btw, the longest URL I have ever had to type).

The bill amount was quite huge and the problems I noticed with that were:

1) Monthly charges collected twice for the same month - Rs.650/- excess

2) Charged for an additional Static IP when I neither asked for nor have it - Rs.2000/- extra

3) Usage as charged more than what is displayed in online statement - Rs.100/- excess.

The net effect of these three items was an increase in my monthly bill by about Rs.3000/- pre-tax.

I decided to complain about it and endured a 25 minute test of my patience when the person at the other end struggled to understand what I was trying to explain. The matter is not yet solved, but I am almost certain it will take some more time before it gets resolved.

All in all, dealing with Tata Indicom/con is extremely difficult. I used to have BSNL Data One connection with which I had no such problems - and I wish I had not shifted home, if it meant dealing with Tata Indicom/com, which is why my DataOne connection is not with me yet.

UPDATE ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2006

After my last post, I sent a mail to Tata Indicom Customer Service asking them to rectify the billing related errors - this was on August 31st.

I also pointed out that since there were about 14 days to go before the due date of the bill (September 13th), I would appreciate it if they could speed up the response as I did not want to have my connection cut off for non-payment of bills. I sent a follow-up mail on September 6th and again on September 10th and 11th, but received no responses. By this time I was getting quite fed up - and in response I received a new complaint number! On September 15th, Friday, two days after the due date I got a call from Tata Indicom stating that

1) They had reversed the erroneous charge for a second static IP

2) They would not be able to reverse the charge of Rs.650/- as it was the rental for the future month in other words I received a bill covering rental for August (first month of service) and September (second month of service). I was also assured that Tata Indicom is the only ISP in the country that does so!

3) I was told that the revised bill amount was now about Rs.2200/- less.

But the saga does not end there. The next morning, three days after my bill due date, Tata Indicom cut off my internet access - clearly they do not see their own delay (and the fact that they called me on a Friday) as having anything to do with my delayed payment - basically they gave me no chance to even pay the bill!

I was sufficiently angered to fire off an email to them (thank God for the fact that I also have a GPRS connection with Airtel) assuring them that I intended to take up this matter with a Consumer Forum.

I continue to await a response, five days after sending the mail.

TAILPIECE: A couple of days later I received a call from BSNL about my restored DataOne connection. First a person from the exchange called about half a dozen times because my connection was not getting through - he had to leave for the day before the problem was fixed. Then I spoke to another person at their call centre who told me the problem was due to the password, which he proceeded to reset for me, and almost instantly I was online again. As for the man at the phone exchange, it appears as if the first thing he did after arriving at work the next morning was to give me a call to check how things were!