I stay in Hyderabad. Three months back I had opted for a post-paid connection of Hutch. In Hyderabad Airtel is much more popular than Hutch. Still I went for Hutch for two reasons:
i) In my hometown, Calcutta, Hutch provides good service. So I thought I would expect the same in Hyderabad also.
ii) Hutch’s deal was marginally better than Airtel.
All my friends and colleagues here avail Airtel. They advised me against Hutch. However I did not listen and later suffered.
The story began with the first month’s billing. The bill did not arrive at all. In spite of several complaints and reminders at their help line. Finally it did not come at all, and I had to deposit the amount at a Hutch Shop.
Next month also the bill did not arrive. I waited for several days and finally decided to shift to a pre-paid connection. I learned from Hutch that by paying a one-item migration fee of Rs. 250 I could shift to a pre-paid connection. My number would remain unchanged.
So I walked up to a Hutch Shop and made the necessary payments. I was told that the new SIM card would be activated within 3 hours.
Guess how many days it took? 5 days! I used call up Hutch everyday twice or thrice. Every time I had to repeat my problem from the very beginning. They do not seem to have the practice of recording customer complaints. At least with BSNL your complaint is recorded and you get a complaint number (docket number).
During those agonizing 5 days I tried to reach their top officials. But their website https://hutch.co.in does not have any contact details of their higher officials. You may note that even government companies like BSNL have full contact details of their higher officials right on their website.
However I got two email ids of Hutch Care from their website. I wrote to both of those. You know what happened? The mails simply bounced back. I kept on writing, they kept on bouncing back.
Finally after lots of trouble and endless phone calls I got my pre-paid SIM card activated. The old number was, fortunately, unchanged!
Recently a Hutch customer care person called me and enquired if I wanted to go for a night plan called TalkLate. In this the airtime rate is Rs. 0.30 instead of the normal Rs. 2.40. The monthly charge would be Rs. 30. It appeared attractive. So I called up Hutch Care and asked them to activate TalkLate for me. That was 7th March. I was assured that within one day it would be activated. But for several days it was not done. Meanwhile, to dramatise the matters further, they deducted the charge of Rs. 30 twice, without activating TalkLate! Finally it was activated yesterday. But I am yet to get back the excess deduction of Rs. 30. Since 7th March I have called Hutch Care several times. As usual, every time I had to repeat my story afresh. And as usual I had to listen to truckloads of false assurances.