I’d taken a powersurfer connection in March 2005 out of sheer compulsion as there was no other broadband service provider in my area at the time (Andheri east). It worked well for the first month or so, but then I started having problems with very frequent downtimes. For no apparent reason, it used to conk off for a day or for several hours every now and then (almost twice or thrice a week). My job requires me to work late at night almost every day and coordinate with colleagues in US, so any downtime is very inconvenient.
To avoid these hassles, I was forced to buy a Tata Indicom wireless connection also, which is superb and very reliable but obviously can’t match the speed of a broadband connection. I usually buy a prepaid card for a speed of 256 kpbs, but the speed is always significantly lower than the promised levels.
Since the last 6 months or so, it has become much worse with their connection going down for several months at end. Any pleas to compensate for the lost time, always fall on deaf ears. First you have to wait on the phone for at least 30 min. before you can speak to someone at the call centre, which has all useless people with no knowledge about networking. Then they tell you to send e-mails to their helpdesk, which again elicits no response.
Last 2 prepaid cards, which I bought with a validity of 2 months each have expired with only 3 days of actual usage. The standard response from their engineer is "fibre optic outage". If a Company like Reliance can’t provide reliable service for months at end, I really feel like dragging them to consumer court. Now I’m switching to MTNL broadband, which I hope will be better than this.
This also means that almost Rs.5500 that I’d paid for getting the connection besides the Rs.1800 that I paid for the prepaid cards during the last 4 months go down the drain.
They’re really cheating their customers and I’ve sworn never to go to Reliance for any pdt or service in future. They just don’t care abt the customers and service levels mean nothing to them.