I live in Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai and have BSNL landline connection (Got the connection after 2/3 visits to the BSNL office with out much difficulty). I faced tremendous problems when I was trying to surrender my phone.
I was about to leave for UK and decided to vacate my house in Chennai. Since, I thought telephone is very essential, I decided to terminate the connection 2 or 3 days before I leave. Finally having decided to surrender the phone, one fine morning I went to the Adyar Telephone exchange since I saw a board ’Customer Service Centre’ there. Went in and asked for the procedure for surrendering my Telephone. They told me that they cannot handle the Surrender of Telephone and I was advised to go to the Nandanam office (I think its GR Complex).
As told by them, I went to the Nandanam office and again found the ’Customer Service Centre’ and was waiting in the enquire counter to ask for surrendering my telephone. The person in the enquiry counter was busy chatting with his colleague. Even he knew that I was waiting for an enquiry. What a customer service ? Finally he turned up. I explained my case. He asked me to go to the first floor of the office, where telephone cancellation section is located with a letter for surrendering the phone, original receipt of the connection and the latest bill.
I don’t have my latest bill since I am disconnecting the phone in 2 months. I went to the cancellation section at the first floor of the office. I was asked to wait. I was waiting for around 15 minutes and a lady turned up and asked the receipts. I gave all and explained that I don’t have the latest telephone bill of mine. She said that connection can’t be terminated without the production of latest bill. I was shocked and told her that I have paid Rs. 2000 as deposit and the bill amount pertaining till date, be deducted from this. If it exceeds this amount I would pay it immediately. She said, she can’t help in this matter and asked me to contact the billing section and get a no-objection from them. My god. Need to talk to another officer ? Oh no.
I went to the billing section situated on the same floor and explained my case. Again I was asked to wait since supervisor is not in his seat. I was waiting for 30 minutes and finally he came and listened my case. He was quite OK when compared with other officers there. He understood the problem and told me that they can’t produce the bill now, but he can give a no-objection for the same. He asked me to write a letter stating if the bill amount exceeds my deposit amount I would bare the same. I did the same and gave the letter to him and got the No-objection from him and again went to the Cancellation section.
The lady in that section processed my request and gave me the cancellation order ( Something like that ). I was bit relaxed now. Hmmm. But, it did’nt even last for a minute. The lady asked me to take my telephone and go to the Thiruvanmiyur Telephone exchange office along with this cancellation order and get the submission report (or what so ever they call) from them. MY GOD. Again another trip ? What to do ? I went home took the telephone and went to the Thiruvanmiyur exchange and found no body there. A lady was cleaning there and I enquired with her and got to know that it’s lunch time and everybody will be back after an hour. I went back to home and came again after an hour to the office. The responsible person took the phone and inspected. Fine. He said, the Chord is missing with the telephone and they require that. Ooops. I left that at home. He said it can be brought from a near by shop. I decided to do the same instead of going back to home. He gave me the Submission report and asked me to go to the Nandanam office and submit this to get the refund if any. Oh Noooooooooo. Not again. I was literally crying this time.
I decided to leave the rest to my friend and complete the procedure since I did not have time to go there again and again just to dis-connect my telephone connection. I almost reached the height of irritation with the service and process followed by the BSNL.
BSNL has got very good infra-structure and wide range of products with very very poor service and process. I suggest them first to become customer friendly with the existing products they offer instead of introducing new products then and then with poor service.