Brainless Customer Care. Review on Reliance Mobile Operator

I have been an old time user of Reliance - right from the Dhirubai amabani plan in 2003. I regret that I had not given this up much earlier instead of testing my endurance levels. The sole reason I had been sticking on was for the network coverage since I was travelling - but now there are enough providers in the market who are doing the same adn one can always find something better.

Everything was fine until July 2007 when my friends/folks at home started complaining that I was not reachable and when I checked back at those times it I was either at my office desk(Mg Road - Bangalore) or my house(both places where the connectivity is all the bars on the phone!). This continued for a couple of weeks. The unreachable problem was irrgular - cos in an hour they could always reach me. We checked this connectivity by calling me on landline whenever they found me unreachable - at all those times -  the phone still showed full range.

I complained to the customer care repeatedly and was informed that my complaint was taken and I would be responded to - sometimes the response(usually after 2 days) was - problem fixed and at one time I got a response - that they could not reach me to solve the problem -(I was dumbfounded- if my problem is that I am not reachable - n CC saying we cannot reach you so we cannot solve it). Anyways repeated complaints and escalations brought no respite.

To add to this there was a new problem.

In April this year I had to switch to a new handset Nokia 1255 - as the shelf life

of my earlier Nokia 2112 was not more than a year and half -(the battery

refuses to get charged or gets used up in one call - I have had nother

friend who bought a 2112 with me have the same problem).

The microphone of the new phone developed a problem in August. People could not hear me. So I called Reliance Customer Care asking for service centers where I could fix it -(well I bought it at there outlet)

After 3 days I get a list of address, contacts and phone numbers- one of the addresses was just off MG Road where I work

Titan Industries Limited

1st Floor, No. 32 Safina Plaza Infantry

Road Bangalore  -560 001

-NA-

080-25595014

Mr G.Manjunath

I landed up in the shop and magine my shock when this turned out to be a watch service center! I repeatedly told the guy this was given to me by RElaince - I also spoke to Manjunath who was available at the phone number given by the CC and he assured me that they have never handled reliance handset since it was a watch service place.

I obviously left the building feeling like a fool and wrote a mail to Rel-CC asking them to update their list of service centers since most of the numbers in that list were not working and I did not wish to go personally and discover what shops they were. They took another week and sent me back the very same list - I escalated the issue to the nodal officer who also sent me the same list. By then I had stopped using the phone. after about 20 days Nokia called me about the same problem and gave me one address - I rushed all the way there - only to discover that they dont handle CDMA servicing.

By now I was totally disgusted and just went next door and got myself a GSM handset and switched to Airtel.

A month had passed without me able to use my phone and REliance still not addressing the connectivity issue - I paid my bill upto the time I had used the phone and wrote a mail asking them to disconnect the number. I was not paying monthly charges for bad customer service and no incoming/outgoing for a month. I also wrote a detailed mail about the problem I faced leading to the disconnection.

I faced another week of irritation from Reliance when I got 3 responses from the Customer Care

the first being  mail - which was a copy pasted mesage meant for some other phone number saying that the mentioned prepaid number was already disconnected - Ireplied back asking the person to read my mail and reply to the correct phone number

the second being a call  to convince me to stick on to reliance and that they would dedduct the 1 month not used charges - she asked me to courier the handset to her so she could see what the problem was - I was amused - I had already wasted enough calls and trip worthing to half the cost of the handset to get it fixed and now I had to spend more and courier it. I refused mentioning that it was now 2 months and I already had  new provider.

The third response came after a few days where this guy oblivious to the whole disconnection mail was asking me to pay the complete amount irrespctive of any problems that I faced.

I am so happy to have got out of their service and will recommend others never to move to Reliance.