Complaints
From Www.india-gii.org
TRAI
(Posted on India GII list on 29 April 2005)
We have had a Tata Indicom phone (what they now call Walky) for nearly a year. The service has been so bad that we have not publicised the number.
Specifically:
The battery life is terrible (this is the same LG instrument also distributed by Reliance) - less than a day, if the phone is actually used, and about a day, if not.
The phone disconnects frequently during a conversation (this is why we don't tell people what the number is: it's just too embarrassing).
The phone has never worked in all the rooms in the flat (the Bandra suburb of Mumbai), and even when kept in the same place, the readout shows the signal fluctuating (from full to zero and back again - if the signal drops to nil for about five seconds, the line disconnects).
Phoning the help line (121) is an exercise in frustration. Very polite voices that can't help.
The Internet service is only available on Windows computers with an RJ45 connector: the RJ45 socket has to be reprogrammed to a dialer interface (the phone acts as a modem). I found this out after several calls to increasingly higher levels of authority within their technical team: it took at least an hour and several calls, including about three that they returned (if I recall right, I also got clarification on this from the list at the time). The special cable kit to do this was only delivered after I complained about the fact that it hadn't been included in the box.
The last straw came yesterday, when while attempting to dial we got a recorded message saying "This service is not available on your telephone". I rang 121, and was told by a very polite young man, "You can't use the phone outside the area where it was installed, due to a recent TRAI ruling." I asked him whether I was not allowed to use the phone in the house? He began to parrot the same answer: after about five repetitions (patiently explaining to him that not only was the phone in the house, it was actually plugged in to the battery recharger at the time and in fact hadn't been moved since the failed attempt) I asked him to call the supervisor.
Another person came on the line, identified herself as a senior supervisor and began to say the same thing. I informed her politely that I was quite aware of the TRAI ruling, and that it certainly did not prohibit the use of the telephone within the premises. I then began to tell her about all the problems we had since the phone was installed (which she informed me from her records, was in June 2004). She interrupted me to say that we had never recorded a single technical complaint since installation. I asked her about the series of calls I had regarding the Internet service: she said there was no record of it.
She then said she would give me my current complaint booking number, so that I could keep it on record. I asked her to please SMS it so that it was available on the instrument itself. She started to explain that she could not do this, when the line disconnected. I do not know the complaint number. This process took about 24 minutes.
I dialed again, and got a new customer service person, this time a different young lady. Since I knew the supervisor's name, I asked her to immediately reconnect me to her, but this could not be done as she could not control which senior supervisor would respond. Over a period of another 10 minutes before the phone disconnected again, she told me categorically that my complaint would be redressed within 12 hours positively. This was in response to my request to please inform me the process to request removal of the line and return of our deposit. She said it wasn't necessary, that the complaint would definitely be resolved. On my asking her to just give me the information requested, she finally let me know that in fact it only takes a call, the phone will be disconnected within 48 hours and the deposit refunded within 40 days.
They have still not called back, 24 hours later, to resolve the complaint.
Follow up (19 May 05)
The posting on the India GII list found its way to a senior manager in Tata Indicom, in the Customer Service department. She mailed me and, in a series of calls and a visit from the service engineer (the first ever) the company was unable to get the phone working relably.
We then attempted (on 9 May 05) to request disconnection using 121, the normal process. We faced enormous opposition, couched in polite and occasionally desperate sounding requests to allow them to fix the problem. After three working days of this runaround, the person who mailed me finally accepted that the disconnection would be done effective 9 May, and that we would be refunded all rentals for the disconnected period.
After this we got two more calls from the 'retention department' who promised me, fairly wildly, that 'everything would be done' to get the phone working properly. Since these calls have all been coming in on the MTNL landline, I only laughed and told him that he was welcome to try calling on the Indicom line, if he thought he could make it work, that even the service engineer who came here and spent an hour trying to assign the phone to a particular tower, could not do so. A day later the retention department also apparently threw in the towel.
The phone was officially disconnected on 14 May, but this will be reverted back to 9 May, which matches the billing cycle. We now await refund of the deposit given at the time of application for the phone service.
It seems to me that it is quite impossible, technically, to fix a wireless phone to a physical area bounded by a few meters, and to shape this area to match that of a house property. Any regulatory order passed that tries to impose this condition is bound to be infructuous, and against the interests of consumers.
Note that for at least ten years fixed line service providers have limited their service to bringing a line to the walled boundary of a private house property. All connections further within the house property are the responsibility of the tenant/consumer, excepting perhaps value added services such as switch based EPABX services that need special instruments, and also provided they attempt to keep the effective ring number value = 1 (I can't recall the technical name for this value), which is done by simply using approved branded telephone instruments. Under the circumstances, restrictions on fixed line wireless services cannot and must not be more onerous than that on landline service providers.
Member complaint forwarded by Association of Public Internet Access Providers:
