Another bad review from me. It could be that I’m a pessimist, or that I’m writing only about bad experiences, but unfortunately a state-of-the-art customer service is yet to be seen from anyone as far as I’m concerned.
Story of Tata Indicom mobile.
First, the plus points. their network is good, the mobile is somewhat worth the money(Nokia 8105), and I haven’t lost range in any place I have been so far, so things are pretty ok that ways. and yes, they have a pretty smooth online payment system.
But, as of now, I’m frustrated. first, my mistake that I had delayed the payment for the month because some funds didn’t get into my account as I had thought. so I made a delayed payment on last Thursday. I made the payment online(as I always do) through credit card. the connection was active and I was happy thinking everything was ok.
Friday morning - I dial a number and I get a message - "Welcome to Tata Indicom. Outgoing has been barred due to non-payment of bills. ". Right, fine! Probably it takes a day for them to get the online payment updated in their system(because when I get a call from the billing dept., they speak as if they don’t know about the online payment option).
Saturday afternoon - connection still not active! I call up 121, and ask them if they can reactivate the connection. They check my account, and find that the money is there already, and they take a complaint number to get it reactivated in 6 hours.
Saturday evening - I get a message from Tata Indicom that they have received my payment. Ok, cool!
7th hour - I check again, no outgoing yet! I call up the customer care guys and they say that the original complaint has been closed because the connection shows as Active in their end. I tell them there might be a mistake, because I can’t make outgoing still. The guy apologizes, and gets another complaint open, gives me another 6 hour deadline.
Another 7 hours - I’m a late night worker, so I was up beyond bedtime. I check my mobile again, no outgoing! Another call to 121, talked to a guy who said please wait till morning because the second complaint is still open, and they are still working on it. He seemed to be in a hurry to close the call, so I thought there wasn’t any point wasting time talking, and decided to wait till morning.
Another 10 hours - Late night work, I woke up at around 10:30, bless me, it’s Sunday! After the morning chores, check mobile again, no outgoing! Another call to 121, got another guy who said my complaint is still open, and that I’ll escalate it to 2nd level and get it activated in max 4 hours. Ok, 6 hours came down to 4 hours, good sign, so I said ok!
Another 5 hours - Went out with wife, came back, after 5 hours, still no outgoing. Time was 4:30 PM. I call 121, a girl picks up the phone and after another round of apologies, says that she’ll get it activated by 5:00 PM. Half an hour, probably we’re reaching somewhere, so that’s good!
5:30 PM - No outgoing! I call up and another girl picks up and tells me she’ll get it activated by 7:00 PM. I told them to give me a fixed timing because I’ve been getting deadlines after deadlines - never had this much deadline shifts even in a software project. I told her if I don’t get it at 7:00 as she promised, you’re losing another customer!
8:30 PM - I slept for awhile because I have another long night ahead, and office tomorrow! And I need this thing activated if I have to work properly in my office tomorrow. I check my mobile at around 8:30 PM - no outgoing yet! I called 121, asked them what are my options to deactivate my connection. He told me the options to activate my connection! Funny people. I had all intentions of giving him a piece of my mind had he known my native language - I knew all the bad words in it, but alas, not every good thing comes in one package! Then I told him the whole story once again, and told him this is the last time I’ll tell the story, and the next one would be a letter to the nearest customer care center to deactivate the connection. He told me it will be active within midnight!
3:25 AM the next day - I’m writing this review in mouthshut now. Still no outgoing! I don’t want to waste my breath calling them again now, because I’m very much sure I’ll get another one online who just want to close a call or give me another deadline rather than try and find out or fix my problem.
That’s it! I’m not going to call them again. Probably if one of you guys have an email I can escalate this to, I might send this review to them and hopefully they’ll respond! I’ll probably live with just the incoming calls. Probably I’ll wait till the next bill surfaces, and won’t pay it, and then they will go and try to cancel my outgoing calls, and find that it is already barred for the past month, and they’ll do whatever - But I’m NOT going to call customer care again!