Dateline January 14, 2012 - Saturday
I got a call from Mr. Menon’s office in response to my feedback on the lines under. Since I wasn’t really interested in sops like free Twitter and such, it’s mutually agreed to extend me free rentals for the next two months.
A fair deal, so I have no further angst against airtel.
Regards,
Emptor
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Hi,
On the 27th instant, subscribers of airtel suddenly found it strange that their BB / BBM / Cells / Data Card were silent/dysfunctional. Something extremely odd in these times of constant beeps/pings.
Then the news got out that one of their service centres in the ’burbs had been affected by a fire.
So far is fine as this is something over which they have no control. You may recollect the BB international outage some months back.
The difference lies in the treatment of this disaster. Firstly, it shows their lack of preparedness in ensuring necessary BCP/DR procedures in place to tide over such instances. They were actually caught with their pants down, so to speak. [BCP - Business Continuity Planning; DR - Disaster Recovery]
To add insult to injury, the only thing they do to alleviate consumer misery is issue an apology in the papers. Worded to the effect that they cant help it, but just for the record ’sorry’!
Compare that with the alacrity of response from RIM when BB failed and the us$ 100 free apps offered to overseas users; (India is only a cash cow, dont merit any freebies as our govt is more interested in censoring the net than in protecting consumers interests!)
Mr. Mittal is busy counting his millions and milking the subscriber so too much to expect him to intervene and issue a communication offering similar sops to subscribers.
They say, things are back on line. Are they? I still ant dial out from my number, cant text and the EDGE signal fluctuates thru the day - am sending off new year mails right now as who knows what will happen when the servers get overloaded tomorrow night?
It happens only in India. Jai ho!! And they want us to be jumping with joy on the advent of modern tech and entry of big brands here?
Shame on you Mr. Mittal.