Hello friends,
There are many reviews here praising hutch like anything.Even I would’ve written such a review a few months ago, before these people brought this missed call details thing on 303.
I had a very bad experience a couple of months ago. People were calling me and telling me that my phone was often unreachable though I have not had signal problems till now. One fine evening, while I was travelling on GST Road from Tambaram to St. Thomas Mount, a friend had called me and got the message that I was unreachable. Then, I got an sms from 303 asking me to send ’’GET’’ to 303 to get the missed call details. I have to spend 2 rupees to send that sms to get the caller’s number and again pay for the call which I have to make to this friend of mine. Had that call gone through, I have to pay nothing right? This 303 is a way of fooling customers and I absolutely hate it. All the praises which I had for hutch since the time I had taken the connection all vanished in that single evening. Next day on my company’s letter head I was signing the surrender of that connection. I request you people if any of your friends have a hutch post-paid connection, ask them if they have similar experiences. If they do, please stay away and that is my humble request.
And the most funny thing after all this is, the month after I surrendered my connection I received a bill with amount Rs.11. I don’t know how on earth do these people think that I could’ve downloaded something from Yahoo! without even a Sim card. I was charged Rs.10 for that and service tax @ 8% Rs.0.80, and rounded off to Rs.11.
Now while roaming around for taking up a new connection, I found that Reliance had a wonderful scheme of 399 rental a month, and 1 rupee to any mobile in India be it CDMA 1X or GSM 900/1800. That sounded really cool. But there are a few operators to whom you can’t send sms. For example, from a chennai Reliance mobile you can’t send SMS to Aircel customers of rest of Tamil Nadu. On querying about this, they couldn’t tell me when it would be set right. Also I can use their phone only with their connection. So Reliance ruled out.
RPG (now Aircel), has very good signals, but during the evenings neither can you send any SMS or can make a call. Even if you are successful in making a call at around 5.30pm, I’m sure it’d be the 5th or 6th time you are pressing the green button on your phone. So RPG also ruled out.
That leaves me with BSNL Cellone, Airtel, and Tata Indicom.
BSNL Cellone offers same tariff across both the circles Chennai and Tamil Nadu. But my friend who is a CellOne customer from the beginning May 2003, he says still in Buildings and in the basement signal quality is poor and has to rush to the window to hear the caller properly. So CellOne also ruled out.
Airtel has the largest subscriber base in Chennai and so I don’t want to go for that. Their networks must be the busiest. And I’ve also heard their customer care is not that good. Even at their Nungambakkam office, its like a ’’sandhai’’ where there is lots of crowd and you would be asked to wait before getting to speak to a customer care executive. By the time you get to speak to the customer care executive, you would’ve slept. Literally I slept while I went with a friend some months ago. He had gone to get his MMS facility activated.
That leaves only one more choice TATA INDICOM. They have the least subscribers (which is a plus point according to me), no congestion, signals are there however deep you go inside a building or the basement. Hassle-free billing. No fundas. No special features. Just if you want to talk and send SMS, and view cricket scores and do nothing else on your mobile, this is the connection for you. I haven’t had any problems till now. And its the only mobile you can get through any call with a single press of the green button at any time of the day. And now they offer roaming also. I’m taking it to bangalore this weekend. Will keep you all updated after my tour.
Bye, guys, I hope you found this review useful.
deepak.