This review is about Hutch service in Bangalore only.
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I have updated this review on May 26, 2003. Updated comments are at the bottom of this review.
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After deliberating for quite some days whether to go for GSM service or CDMA service,
I opted for GSM service due to 1 single reason - the choice of GSM phone instruments
available in India. For me, a mobile phone is not just a phone, its much more.
In the past I have used 2 Samsung and 1 Sanyo phone (in the past 4 yrs- all CDMA).
So after selecting a phone (SonyEricsson’s T310 - review in the phone section), I
had to select a service provider. In Bangalore, Airtel is numero uno and most of
my friends are on Airtel network, a few are on BSNL and a couple of them on Hutch.
Spice is the 4th GSM operator in Bangalore. All the people that I talked to
recommended Airtel due to its great network in Bangalore and good coverage in
Karnataka as well as South India. However, I din’t need any roaming, and my
requirement was that it should have a good coverage in Bangalore. My sister has
been using Orange service in Mumbai and was pretty satisfied with it, and so
I decided to go for Hutch. The dealer was keen on providing me a post-paid connection,
but I preferred to go for pre-paid to check for a few months Hutch service.
So I subscribed to Hutch pre-paid ’Talk Late’ plan where my Incoming calls are
totally free and outgoing is Rs 3 from 9 am to 9 pm, no outgoing airtime from
mignight to 5 am and Rs 1 for the remaining hours. SMS is free from 9 pm to 9 am
and 50 paise from 9 am to 9 pm. When I subscribed, the dealer told me that outgoing
airtime was 50 paise from 9 pm to midnight, but this was wrong and I had to contact
customer serivce when more was deducted from my card. So they clarified that it
is indeed Rs 1 and not 50 paise. So that misinformation was one bummer.
But they asked me to goto the dealer and get the amount credited, however
it wasn’t a big amount and so I never bothered to go back. But it was
a nice gesture to atleast offer me the credit. I wouldn’t treat this
as a dispute. Its just misinformation by the dealer.
The next day I got an sms from them that on my first recharge, I will get
additional Rs 75/- talktime and on my second recharge, I will get an additional
talktime worth Rs 50/- I recharged it yesterday, and immediately the extra
Rs 75/- were added to my balance.
Regarding Hutch network in Bangalore, I have been using it since about 3 weeks
and its pretty good so far. I never had downtimes or network congestion problem.
I stay near Lalbaug which is well under city limits and so the coverage is good.
I have used it near Majestic and on airport Rd (till airport) and the reception
and signal strengths were good/strong. I am yet to use it in far-away areas or
near Ring Road, so once I do so, I will update my review.
Regarding their customer service, I had to call them about 4-5 times for some
clarifications as well as for setting up voice mail, and so far they have been
quite helpful and friendly. Ofcourse this is if I called in daytime. If you try
reaching them after 9 pm, you need a very very good luck to get connected. You
have better chances of winning 1 Crore jackpot than getting connected to them
at night !! But hey, the call to customer care is a free call and so I don’t
mind trying more often :)
They have a service - Hutch online which is menu driven and sms based. Its a
value added service and is very useful. You can get news, cricket scores, weather
information, travel status (train/airline timings etc). Infact it helped me
a lot when I had to book train tickets for Mumbai and because of vacations,
most of the trains were full (I had a choice of 3 trains and 3 different dates)
and so just before my number came on the counter, I checked the availability of
seats on the 3 trains for 3 dates, and depending on the least waiting list,
I was able to fill just 1 form rather than carrying multiple forms !
Ofcourse, as with customer service, Hutch online service too works well
during daytimes but at nights sometimes the server is down.
Their website is quite informative, but again its not updated and so there
is lot of misinformation there. For eg. apart from tariff differences, even
for recharge card validity period, the website states that Rs 1000/- recharge
card is valid for 60 days, but when I recharged it, the validity period was
75 days !! Good for me :)
So to summarize, I am happy with their network so far, and also with their
customer service and value added features. The only cons are the ones that I
mentioned above - customer service scarcity at night times and server problems
for Hutch online during night. Hopefully they are improving day by day in
Bangalore and so I am happy about that.
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Update on May 26, 2003 :
Since May 1, when IUC regime came in force, it seems that Hutch has fired all their customer service reps !! For the first 15 days I was trying to get in touch with their so-called 24 hr customer service (via dialling 111 from the phone and dialling 98860-98860 from landline) for some questions that I had about national roaming, but I was never able to connect to any of their reps !! It was so pathetic that even in day time I was unsuccessful ! I was so mad at this that I submitted a written complaint too.
The situation has not improved at all ! So if you have any questions, its better to walk to any Hutch shops rather than calling Hutch Care ! If there is 1 reason why I would discontinue Hutch and move on to some other provider, it would be this - bad or rather non-availability of customer service.
Also, now they are charging Rs 2/- for SMS to 4-digit numbers (eg 8888, or even their Hutch Online service which I had praised in my review). So even if you are on Talk Late plan which has free SMS at night, you would be charged Rs 2/- for SMS to above numbers.
I am re-rating Hutch from ’5’ to ’3’
> End of Update <
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