The folks at Idea Cellular have a really meaningful catch-phrase... ’’an idea can change your life’’. Didn’t realise they are serious about it until recently I shifted from Hyderabad to Bangalore and stopped using their services.
Story starts in June 2004. This guy from Idea comes to my office and offers me a zero-deposit connection. I have to just sign a form and they will charge my credit card for the monthly usage and rentals. What a convenient way of doing things!
Now comes the bad part. In October I get transfered to Bangalore and calls Idea customer service to inform of the same. The person attending the call says normally they don’t accept a cancellation request thru phone. I tell her am in sort of a hurry to leave the city and it would be great if she could help. She says all the outstanding will be charged right away and the connection terminated.
Well... I was in for a surprise! They charge me full rentals for october. I thought ’’okay... not a very friendly operator. Charges for the full term if you started using that month’’.
Come November they charge me again! Hey dude, did I just sign a life-time rental agreement or something?! I call them up again is put on hold for 15 minutes and the line just drops off.
Calls again next day. After around 4 calls and spending more money than the rentals on blr-hyd phone charges am told to send a mail and assured everything should be fine then.
On one of the calls the customer support person stopped just short of calling me a liar for telling that someone told me back in october that my line will be disconnected!
After all this they are cheeky enough to ’’look forward to welcome you back to network always’’ and to say ’’At IDEA, we believe in customer delight’’. Yeah yeah... I know by now! Tell me of a better way of looting people!
BEWARE of using ECS from Idea Cellular. They are out to loot!