I have been a cell phone subscriber to the BPL service at Mumbai for over 8 years. My monthly billings over the last 8 years would average to approx Rs. 4500/- per month. To say that I have been one of their high spend customers would be in order. I have also travelled across the length and breadth of our country and also several times internationally and made use of thier roaming services.
I had initially faced some teething troubles with them in terms of connectivity at Navi Mumbai where I stay and at Bandra where I work. They were quick to address it and since then I had faced virtually no issues. In fact, I was one of their delighted customers untill very recently.
My troubles started around 3 months ago. Suddenly, I found that the once smooth services were getting rough. Connectivity at most places started to give trouble. My phone calls would get disconnected while in the midst of conversations, I would be "unreachable", messages would not come or go or take a long time to go, error messages etc. etc. All my friends and acquaintances started to get the feeling that I was either avoiding them or not interested. My relationships began to suffer.
I dont know whether this was caused by the monsoon or by their lack of interest in view of impending sell down. I lived on hope and the feeling that time, the greatest healer would set this right also. I did call them a few times but found the response very lack lustre. In between I got a message from them stating that they are making a lot of investments to improve the quality of service. A lot of time has passed since that SMS but the services are as bad as ever.
I checked by getting a new SIM card from BPL, by putting a "Hutch" SIM card on my phone, by putting the BPL SIM card on some other phone etc. All of these led me to the same conclusion - BPL service is pathetic. It has slid down the scale and hit the botoom. My advice to all readers - avoid them and switch instead to Airtel or Hutch.