’’’’Empowering Relationship...through communication...’’’’
In the last couple of years we have seen mobile taking India by storm and every major business house fighting to give the services. Even business house like Reliance is getting and putting its foothold in it. No doubt the Areas of the service given in India are distributed into various Levels.
For E.g. Metro Cities like Mumbai, Delhi in the L1 list and Cities like Coimbatore in the L4 list. These levels are actually nothing but the price differences based on the SOL of the City.
To give you broader idea, For E.g If in Mumbai BPL is giving a scheme of Rs.1.75 for 60secs outgoing and Incoming Rs1.50 and Outgoing SMS 1 Rs and Incoming Msg free. Then in Coimbatore (Aircel) it is as low as Rs1.25 for 3mins outgoing and Incoming totally free and Outgoing SMS 25paise and Incoming Message free.
But, no doubt in the last couple of years the prices have really gone down now, more and more people have started using, but sadly the level of services going down with more customers. The Service providers have become greedy and they don’t care whether their customers are happy or not. Sadly, bigger organizations like BPL are the leader in cheating people. Some how BPL in the last couple of years have shown all the shades of grey.
B(ahut)P(areshan)L(og)…
Earlier, I had written a review on Orange which is the number one service provider according to the number of subscribers. But Orange has deteriorated in the last couple of years too. The basic problem with Orange is bad network coverage and you are really stranded at many instances when you are having some important conversation your network is broken. After getting really frustrated with the network, finally after lot of convincing from some of my friends I shifted to BPL. I always knew that BPL cheated in their billing, but just the greed for better Network coverage made me to really shift to BPL.
When mobile services started, they were the only service provider who got the maximum areas in India. Mumbai, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu (except Chennai), Pondicherry and Goa are the areas were they provide service. Now you ask me something, is it very good or bad. I would say it’s really good, because when you are on a roaming service, you basically don’t have problems as far as network coverage is concerned.
Partnership…while roaming…
For people like me, who have wheel in their leg and is always on move, and traveling throughout the world, roaming is an important aspect. One thing good about BPL is that they are not stringent as far as partnering with other service provider is concerned. Their only biggest enemy is Orange. They will tie-up with any service provider but when it comes to Orange (Hutchison Max) they close entire door. May be it’s a problem with Orange too. Network under roaming at BPL is fantastic; probably no one could have given a better network coverage. But when it comes to billing, just forget it, you will cheat like hell and once you call the customer service, they will be as rude as possible.
Fraud under post paid card is something we can understand may be they don’t have a proper system to follow. But they don’t leave pre-paid card alone. My colleague took roaming mots from Mumbai and we were in Coimbatore for 2months we had the worst time of our life fighting with BPL Customer service. Now, let me explain you in short.
MOTS ROAMING (Mumbai)
The most expensive telecom facility, despite paying for it BPL is unable to service its commitment to the public. It never ever clarifies on none of their brochures of their inability to service certain components. For e.g. BPL does not have commercial tie-up with Orange for a simple service of exchange of SMS to other BPL circle than Mumbai.
For Instance, a mots roaming customer won’t be able to exchange his SMS to Orange Mumbai, though this service would be available to him on the same card in Mumbai. The customer has already paid a very high price for a convenience of roaming with the same number. Every time he sends an SMS, he is charged Rs1, without even BPL reaching that SMS to the destination their by fleecing the customer and breaching the trust that customer has already paid an advance amount.
MOTS customers are again lured by the advertisement with an ulterior motive just pay, X amount to be mobile, after falling in prey with this advertisement the customer learn that BPL shall be charging him the rental amount of the coming month in advance. What if the customer does not recharge or re-fills for the subsequent months. BPL does not have the policy of refunding the advance rental amount collected and thereby committing a fraud.
Moreover BPL and Orange do not have simple compatibility that their prepaid customers are charged for dialing to any of the number of other services (i.e BPL Dialing to Orange or vice-versa.) Even if the call is not connected due to the unavailability of the dialed subscriber the customer is charged for the same and when brought to these companies notice they refuse to look into the matter, this is nothing but a great economic offence. Which are a cognizable offence and the MDs of these 2 companies should be booked under EOW (Economic Offences Wing) for fleecing Crs of Rupees collected in advance from the innocent customers.
Bill…that you pay…
You can trust your electrical bills but never trust BPL bills check at least 100 times before paying their bills because unlike Orange, BPL has got billing software which is so outdated it requires manual intervention due to which you have lot of mishandling of bills. Unlike Orange you have an automated billing system which generates the bill at the end of the month with out any human intervention. Hence, usually you don’t have problems with Orange bills, but at Orange there are other problems. I will give you an example how they fraud the Bills at BPL. BPL guys are really smart , they wont charge amount on not so frequently used number instead they would over bill the number which you use frequently because usually you don’t remember how many times you have called the number.
…Short but Sweet messages…SMS
BPL messages don’t reach the destination; especially if it’s an Orange number forget it. If you are sending messages one after the other in a short span of time, only some messages will be delivered. If you call at their customer service centre, one answer which you can expect is “Sir, we are facing network congestion…please don’t send messages on one go, give break to the messages…” Man isn’t it ridiculous, now I have to ask her when I have to send the message.
…Customer Service…You must be kidding…
At Orange, you can hold for long time. wait , wait and wait, at BPL you don’t have to wait, but once you are connected to the Customer Service you would start thinking why did I dialed customer service number.
They don’t understand your problems
They will give their own solution which wont fit your need.
Absolutely rude.
Asyis…words of advice.
After all that I had undergone with BPL as far as billing is concerned, I am ready to face network problem but not billing. Hence, as far as possible stay away from BPL wait for the 4th service provide, Airtel, and I don’t expect Dolphin to be of any great help.
©Asyis …2002