As I have mentioned before, I bought a Tata photon (this version called a CDMA 1x USB modem) in late 2009 for my online needs. Not great, just 230 kbps but sufficient for my needs. Customer service jerked me around for some months on a prepaid connection, taking some Rs. 800-1000 per month in spite of my asking for a list of all reasonable plans. I then started running into problems with billing. Although they had me sign up for e-bills, I had to ask them for the bills every month and if I didn’t, I got an unpleasant email telling me to pay up (this they can do by email).
After many calls and emails to customer service, I finally got a hold of the nodal officer and the lady informed me that I could opt for a postpaid connection and just pay Rs. 545 for monthly rental and get unlimited use. So I went for that and things were beginning to seem very quiet. So starting late last year, I get calls from customer care, first they asked me if I had any complaints. They offered to give me a Photon Plus and send technical support to install it into my computer. I said I would think about it.
On the same day this month, I got another call from customer care, this time giving me very specific details, the woman told me I could upgrade to a Photon Plus by giving up my Photon device and paying Rs. 1100 for a Photon Plus (apparently the price of the Photon Plus) but keeping my phone and account numbers in the process. The overall speeds the new device would provide were definitely higher but their plans for this new device were very customer-unfriendly. Despite the higher speeds and presumably lower download and upload times, their plans charged hefty monthly rentals for very limited limits of Internet usage (much like when they duped me with the prepaid connection earlier).
The customer rep offered to send a tech to my place to install the software and gave me a number for my Internet usage according to her records. But since it seemed like the plans were not suitable and the higher Gb limit given to me by my employer was actually not enough for me for more than ten days of normal surfing, I was not convinced that buying their Photon Plus at full cost and giving up what I had for more money and less Gb’s was a good thing. So I put it off. After these two calls, I got another call on the 25th of January, just before the Republic day holiday, which I could not attend but could see that it was customer care from the number on my cell phone.
Strangely, from late morning onwards, my Photon stopped working and I kept getting the message that a USB portal was malfunctioning and that I should replace the hardware device. I tried inserting pen drives into that portal and they worked so it was clearly the Photon. I called customer care that evening, who were, again, very incompetent and had to be told to give me the address and phone number of a showroom in my city based on my pin code. The message was that I should take my photon into the showroom. Next morning, I tried the photon out of curiosity and found it was working again. Again, yesterday morning, the damn thing didn’t work and I got a message that I should insert a UIM card.
After a while, it was fine again and I could connect to the Internet again. I emailed customer care with the phone numbers of the customer care reps who called me and the dates and times of the calls and asked them to reconsider their plans for the Photon Plus and not to blackmail customers into upgrading if these plans were not suitable.
I got two emails from customer care (both identical except for their references to the two dates of my messages) asking me to provide details about the agents. Considering that these phone numbers appear similar and are probably listed with Tata Docomo as customer care offices or reps, I would say that their wanting me to provide details is a tactic to avoid taking action and continue to play around with my service so that I would be forced to switch to one of their horrible plans and pay for the new device. In the meantime, my speeds have dropped and Gmail takes much longer to load its pages.
For those considering Tata Docomo Photons and Photon Pluses, beware of these people’s dirty games. All of these characters are probably playing dirty games but at least go with the ones that give you good value for your money and don’t jerk you around like these dacoits.