The saga of a broadband seeker in India

Found on Google

Summary of the issues in the saga with AIRTEL

1. Person was supposed to come twice, for papers but no sight or sign, had to have multiple conversations with confused people on the phone

2. The data was already given on form as to address and if it was already non feasible why did they even promise to send someone

3. Second time promise was made to pick up papers and no show again

4. Service Tax asked for in cash

5. Needed to give neighbors number to even get them to admit that the site was not feasible

6. Mobile number was locked to an old address, so needed to redo application form with another mobile number

7. Shunted from non feasible to 4G which is many times more expensive

8. Went back to horrible old cable ISP

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Details of the saga

I run 2 ISPs in my house since there are just no proper internet providers and I cant depend on either one and both are backed up by an IDEA 3G phone hotspot which turns out quite slow and expensive.

One day both of the ISPs decided to play funny.

The first had a bandwidth choke based upon the famous so called DDOS attack (7 days for DDOS solution ???, I would murder my guys for that)

AND

The other had connected my fibre converter to an office which switched off at 9 PM and switched on at 11am….. So no internet in between all night.

So I decided that since the ISP could only  connect me during the days that I should change them to Airtel who my neighbor said was giving him good service ( yes I was desperate enough to take my neighbor's advice).

First of all my wife tried to go onto the website and tried to book a new broadband connection. She filled in a form with the following details, name, phone number address and email address.

Next day, I got a call from a man who confirmed that I wanted a booking and immd. started reeling off the plans. We came to a conclusion as to which plan suited me best and he said he needed my KYC documents. Being a ISP myself, I told him that the documents would be ready for him to collect. He said a man would come the next day,to pick up the papers and get my signature.

I explained that the next day I would be travelling and if he could email the application form so that I could sign it along with the KYC for his man to pick up, after about 2 mins of a complete bewilderment conversation on his part I decided that it was just not worth it and told him to send a man 2 days later.

A confirmed time was fixed and a time slot (I think it was 2-4PM if I’m not wrong) was decided upon. The appointed day came and went and of course no show.

So I gave him an extra two days just in case he was running on some International timeline.

Then I asked my wife to follow up on this matter since no one had turned up, no phone call, no email, no sms.

If Mohammed does not go to the mountain, the mountain must go to Mohammed.

She got through to a woman who asked about the status of our connection. My wife explained that no one had called or turned up what what was the next step. The woman on the other side that maybe its not feasible. So my wife told her that there is a connection running in the flat directly one floor below me so how can she say its not feasible. So the woman said she would transfer the line to the technical Dept.  

So now the line went to Technical Dept., and she struggled for 2 mins before the messed up person in the Technical Dept transferred her to the SIM card Dept and she lost her cool and kept the phone down.

I asked her to disconnect and simply save a lot of blood pressure by taking my neighbors active phone number and giving it to them to trace the feasibility

So my wife got the number and called up Airtel once again the next day and straightaway asked for technical since she knew that it was now to be handled at technical level. But the woman said the line cannot be transferred to technical. My wife explained that yesterday they could and today they couldn't

Suddenly it became possible to transfer and the Tech team came on line. My wife narrated the whole incident and lo and behold, he said that our line was showing as “deactivated”.

This came as a shock. She lost her cool and asked him how a line which was never activated be deactivated and on one hand they were saying site is not feasible and on the other the line was magically activated and deactivated overnight.

She asked him to check his records, and he started reading out an address which turned out to be a 5 or 6 year old address we had and the penny dropped.

My wife realized we had an Airtel connection there which we closed when we moved, which is what he was referring to. So the whole conversation went haywire since we were talking of new connection, he was yabbering away about old connection. Finally we got the fact out of him that the old connection was linked to my mobile number and therefore thats what they were referring to.

This obviously means if you have an airtel connection and decide to close it, you better change your mobile number too.

Anyways, I asked her to again fill the form next day with her phone number and her details. The same saga followed, she recd a request number by SMS followed by a phone call the next day, the lady asked her to keep the KYC documents ready and the amount payable.

She also mentioned something about paying the service tax IN CASH.

My wife was a bit taken aback and asked her how can a company like Airtel ask for cash and only the service tax amount, rest could be paid by cheque

She also asked my wife what time an engineer could visit the premises. She gave her the mutually convenient time slot and lo and behold no one turned up again. So again my wife called up to find out what the issue was and straightaway asked for a senior person to be spoken to since the preliminary calls were already over.

When a so called senior person came online, he said the connection was not feasible, when my wife insisted there was already a connection in our building, he turned around and said that the distribution hub was already full and they could not add any new customers till they had enough new ones in the area asking for Airtel connections to be able to setup a new hub. ( I assume its DSLAM since they use copper)

The person on the other side must have been a genius since the only solution he offered was to go for a 4G dongle.

Now keep in mind , 4G is outrageously expensive so perhaps we can understand why the connectivity was not FEASIBLE

I decided it was just not worth it and went back to the ISP with the switch off at 9PM issue and physically traced the fibre to a node where it was occurring and stood there and got the power shifted to the lift room where power to convertor would remain on 24 X 7

Today is a rainy day and both my lines are jumping like a skipping rope.

I am famous for getting tremendously angry with my staff if any of my customers face any small issues, but after this I sincerely think our staff deserves a commendation to their love of their jobs.

Yes we do face HR problems from time to time but if it was ever this much, someone would get fired

If interested, Airtel is welcome to call me and take the phone numbers from which our calls to them were made and they can check the records of their helpdesk for the veracity of the above.