Wanted a datacard for a month’s time and hence approached Reliance. The representative who came to my house said that the minimum he could give it was for a 3 month period (for Rs. 2800) after which it would be automatically terminated. I had my doubts about the automatic termination but he assured me that I will not receive any bills after the 3 month period and the line would definitely be terminated.
My bad experience started from the time I started using it. The speed was nowhere near the advertised 3 mbps. It was more like 3 kbps. Loading a page took so much time that more often than not I would just give up on it and shut it down. But this was just the beginning...
I stopped using it much before the 3 month period and assumed that it was terminated after 3 months. But a month or so later I had a rude shock when someone from Customer Service called me and said that my bill is pending for payment. It was then that I realised that they had not terminated it but had switched my account to a monthly one. I told them that they had made a mistake and to immediately terminate it. However after another couple of weeks I got another call asking me to pay up. I again asked them to terminate it. The calls however did not stop nor was the line terminated.
I kept getting calls almost every week. I called up the representative who sold me the plan and asked him why the line was not terminated as promised and why was I getting further bills. He cooly asked me to call up customer service and make a request for termination or else they would continue charging me.
By this time 3 months had elapsed since my supposed termination and my additional bill had run upto Rs. 1500 even though I had not used it for a single day beyond the first 3 months. I also started getting legal messages by this time. I immediately called up customer service. The rep actually started blaming me for not having terminated the line! I asked to speak to the floor supervisor. She at least seemed to understand and took down two complaints - one on the wrong billing and the other against the sales guy who made the false promise about automatic termination - and promised that someone will respond within 48 hours. I did get a call next day saying that the bill would be waived within the next 5 days.
The legal notice messages did not stop however and in fact I started getting 3 per day and it became more and more threatening. After 10 days I again called up customer service and again spoke to the floor supervisor. She told me that the complaint had not yet been resolved and said that it would be done in another 3 days. The messages did not stop and came to a point where they said that court summons would be issued and criminal proceedings started. After 10 more days I again called up customer service and this time was put through to another floor supervisor who said that since the line was terminated I would need to go to reliance web world to get it resolved! I asked about the complaints and he said that it was still unresolved and they could do nothing about it.
I went to Reliance web world but was told that they could do nothing about it and asked me to call up customer service!!! I immediately called up customer service and gave the phone to the shop guy and they had an argument about who should be resolving it. Finally, I was told that I had to go to the main branch of Reliance world in Chennai but was not given any guarantee that it would be resolved there as well.
After all this harassment I decided that best would be to pay the bill and so I immediately paid up but made sure that I got a signed termination notice with ’All Dues Paid’ as I had lost total faith in them. Promptly all the messages have now stopped!
The whole experience has left a bitter taste in my mouth knowing that I have been looted for no fault of mine. In fact it is BROAD DAYLIGHT ROBBERY. And to add to that mental harassment and total incompetency on their part.
I gave a rating of 1 but it is actually worse than Poor and if there was a 0 I would have given that. Anybody opting for Reliance would be doing so at their own peril. They should be exposed and taught a lesson.