I’ve taken hathway internet connection in the month of September 2003 . For this I had to pay installation fee of Rs 3000/-, Modem fee of Rs 5000/- and a fee of Rs 650/-. It was fine for the first couple of months as the billing was fine. The trouble started in the month of January. To my utter disbelief I was fired with Rs 12000/- for that month.
When I called up the customer service and sought an explanation for this, they said it was due to heavy downloading. I’ve made it clear to them that I haven’t downloaded any thing on to my computer and I juss use to check my mail, chatting, listening to music online and uploading photographs. I was shocked when he told me that, all those things count for downloading. Everthing from browsing, to chatting, listening to music, or uploading photographs - yes they even charge for uploading too...
They haven’t mentioned anything of this , while giving connection. They juss give a downloading capacity of 300MB, and if the downloading exceeds that , I’ve got to pay Rs 2/- for every 1MB I download. Does’n’t it sound ridiculous. Having realized my mistake of opting to hathway connection, i’ve asked them to take off my connection with immediate effect. But nothing happenned. I’ve written no. of e-mails to customer care center, but I haven’t got a reply. Instead, next month I was blasted with a bill of over Rs4000/-. So now the outstanding bill is a staggering Rs 16000/-. When I refused to pay the bill they’ve finally disconnected the service .
After this episode, I’ve took internet connection from my local Cable operator who charges juss 750 bucks per month for an unlimited download. There is no need of any modem. There is no downloading limit and I can download as much of stuff as I want at a speed of 128 Kbps. Hathway was offering 64Kbps.
Moreover, the installation fee was juss Rs 1000/-. Now I am having a true Broadband experience with the new connection which is twice as fast as Hathway and as far as the billing is concerned, it is several degrees lower. Way to go Hathway!!! I guess you’ll learn what customer service is all about from these local operators.