Jul 22, 2009 12:33 AM
6070 Views
This is the copy of the mail I sent to Tata Indicom today. I am a new customer of Tata Photon+ service and my sim no. is9. I had activated the service on 9th of July, with the offerof getting Freedom plan (Rs.1250, 10GB) complementary for 2 months. Myexperience with the service has been exceptional, till the day I wasbilled.
Starting off I was told by the person who came for the installationthat the free data for the first month would be on a pro rata basis. (this means that my free data would be limited to an average 330MB per day till the bill date, so if the bill date is 15 days from my activation date then I would get only 5GB as free data and not 10GB). Imade my peace with that even though I found it a bit unfair. But hecould not give me a billing date as he didnt know it.
I tried to findit out from the website by making an online access to my account fromthe tata indicom website. But even there, there was no billing datementioned. Assuming that the billing date may be end of the month, which is the normal billing date for all the telecom services I haveused, I started using my connection.
I had to come to jaipur on a project, where I recieved a call fromthe customer care, explaining all the details of the plan. There shementioned that my billing date is 19th ... and by that time I realisedthat I must have used up most of my free limit for the 10 days.. (9thto 19th july).
I tried to check my usage online. it showed that I still had around 1GB left. so I used it carefully. I tried to check my usage again on 19th... it showed onlyusage till 15th and below it was written that data usage will take 48hrs to get updated. NOW if a purely data user like me cannot check hisusage real time how can I control my usage? It gave me a false sense ofsecurity that I still had 1 GB left, when I probably had none.
Another thing that I was told by the customer care executive wasthat my credit limit was Rs. 1000, and that I would get an SMS when mycredit limit was crossed. Since I could not ascertain how much my usagewas beyond 15th, I was depending on that sms to know when I had crossthe free usage. I thought my max bill would still be 1000.
Today I got a call, saying that my bill has been generated and ithas crossed the credit limit so I should make the payment immediately.the Bill amount: Rs.3300, Credit Limit: 1000. I asked the lady how isit possible that my bill amount was 3 times the credit limit, she didntknow anything. Now i'm in two minds about paying this bill. There wasno way to ascertain my usage properly, without having to write downeach session's data transfers manually. I'm quite dissappointed.
Its a great service, but The systems backing it are not at all uptothe mark. It pinches me to pay such a huge bill for 10 days of using aservice, and i'll be paying this from my pocket and its not a companypaid plan, all because the company forgot to implement adequate systemsin place. Hope this helps future customers to be careful about their usage. outside the free usage it costs Rs.2/MB for upload and download.
