Happy Birthday Reliance!
April 12th , 2005
Everybody is happy at birthdays . So I wish Reliance a Happy Birthday. But ... But .. and it is a big but it is one thing if I of my own free will give Reliance a birthday gift . And quite another if Reliance decides to nefariously deduct unspecified amounts to deliver a gift to itself!
Let me explain.
On March 22nd . I bought a recharge voucher for Rs. 550/- . This is good for 6 weeks and I always have Rs. 50/- to Rs. 100/- left over. So I expected a reserve of about Rs. 400/- as a 550 voucher gives you only 350/- of call time . This is part of the convention , the rest goes to unspecified ’administrative’ costs.
But checking the balance told me I had Rs 750/ or thereabouts. On inquiring I found this was something called an Anniversary Offer. I did not ask for it. The subtleties were that the extra money was for Reliance to Reliance calls ( local only ) . Maybe somebody wants it , I certainly dont. Yet in a free world I have no choice.
I must state that after converting to Prepaid I did not have many complaints about their charges and with my usage the balance would dwindle by about Rs. 5/- to Rs. 10 /- per day. But that was before the birthday . Everyday when I checked after that it would be down by Rs. 30 /- to Rs. 100/-. And April 5th or 6th I got a message saying I had only Rs. 345/- left and to kindly recharge for uninterrupted service. I could not make outgoing calls.
I thought the mistake would somehow rectify itself. Wishful thinking ! I went to the fancy Webworld place and was told that I had used my normal balance and the remaining could only be used for Reliance to Reliance calls. With the ever decreasing subscriber base they have high hopes. On looking up my records he could find only a few calls, all of less than 2 minutes . The rest were ’’unsuccessful attempts’’ or missed calls , what my daughter sends to her friends to signal them to call by landline.
They gave a TT no. and a number to ring up after 24 hours - *369 . Try it yourself and you will never get through to a Customer representative who thinks my call is very important to them.
To make a long story short. I wanted to activate the inanimate phone so instead of pursuing the matter I recharged with another Rs. 550/- voucher. There the stroy would have ended and you would never have heard about it. After all mistakes can be made anywhere and at anytime. They are best forgotten.
I put in a recharge voucher on the 8th of April . Yesterday I got an SMS saying balance is only 245/- and kindly recharge for uninterupted service. A few inquiries from those who have Reliance phones revealed that there was indeed something quite sinister underfoot. And perhaps an FIR would be more appropriate.
Kindly put in a comment here if you have had the same experience. Or if you think this is unique to this area only.
Thank God there is Mouthshut!
Location : Meerut.