Consider the premise for a new TV show on one of the many, many channels:
A family has 3 adult sons. The father of the household (traditionally the head of the family) has decided that he wants a specific girl to be his daughter-in-law. So now, he will spend the rest of the TV show's life (and what's left of Indian households' brains) deciding which of his sons she will marry.
Are. You. Kidding.
If you're reading this, and want to catch up, here's Part I and Part II.
Right, after realizing towards the end of the previous scenario that there was no hope in the angle I was taking, nor does a company like Reliance care much for the complaints of a dissatisfied customer, or his blog posts. However, the social media push somehow (details left out intentionally, sorry!) got me in touch with their head of enterprise services. I sent him this:
Dear Punit,
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read through this e-mail.
I'm writing with regards to my frustration by Reliance Support and Reliance Customer Care over the last month.
After only recently signing up with your broadband services, both at home and at our offices, my modem at home failed on 8th November. I filed a complaint ...
[The details and facts specified here are pretty much outlined in Part I and Part II, so I'll skip it here]
... and that I would need to e-mail broadband@relianceada.com to state my case and claim.
I have now had (3) e-mail communications back, each stating that no waiver would be approved because the problems had all been resolved within the committed time.
Sir, as an extremely frustrated customer, I wish to highlight:
- As a fellow IT person operating a NOC environment, I cannot understand how Reliance Support engineers can close complaints without (a) showing up (b) contacting a customer and most importantly (c) solving the issue
- I cannot understand why Customer Care are unable to do anything beyond reading that the technical/someone closed my complaint and that it is solved, and opening newer complaint numbers
- Repeatedly e-mailing broadband@relianceada.com only results in being told that the issue has been resolved even though it should be clear that I would not have had to make multiple repeated complaints in the same week had that actually been the case, and that failure of Support System to continue running on the same case number is the reason I have 3 separate ones.
After dealing with this unprofessional attitude, I request that
- An explanation be available as to why customer complaints are being closed without problems being solved or at least some notification to the customer
- I should not be paying for the period wherein Reliance technical team & support failed to restore my services (Nov 08-Nov 16)
- Any additional charges that are incurred because of the delay in my resolution due to Reliance's billing and support teams past the billing date be waived as well.
After writing a long & annoyed letter to Reliance, here's what they offered:
Dear Customer,We regret the inconvenience caused to you.This is with reference to your e-mail regarding "Waiver For Service Faults", registered under the Service Request ID 142081510. Please note that your complaint has been resolved with the resolution, the net not working complaint registered has been resolved within the given time period.Hence we are unable to process the waiver.Looking forward to serve you in the future.Yours sincerely,Siddhesh PawaskarBroadband Customer CareReliance Communications.You may contact us through any of the following means:Phone: 1800 3000 7777 from any phone (Toll free) or,022-3033 7777 from any phone.Email: broadband@relianceada.comWebsite: www.rcom.co.in
My e-mail to Reliance Broadband this morning following my issue. The issue might seem simple, but the principle bothers the hell out of me. I know what it's like to run a Service Delivery team, with targets and closing times and whatnot. But the deplorable service some (read: many) ISPs take on makes me really wonder.
Is it because you're pretty stuck with using them once you sign up that they don't really have to worry about after-sales support and services?
This e-mail is only mildly edited from the original to remove personal account information.
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My name is Chirag Desai and we have internet broadband from reliance at our home.
On the 8th of November, our modem failed. I filed a complaint number 140684488 with customer care, who told me the problem would be resolved within 24 hours. After waiting almost 48 hours, I called customer care again. I was informed that my complaint had been closed. I told the agent that no one even visited me, nobody fixed anything and I was still without internet. He told me he could not do anything about the previous complaint, and so was forced to open a new complaint, number 140803041 (opened nov. 10) and that the problem would be resolved within 24 hours.
I waited 5 days for someone to call me, follow up or even visit our house. No one did.
On the 15th of November, I called customer care again, frustrated that I was without internet for a week. I was told by the agent that my previous complaints had been closed and that the problem was resolved. I told him to please re-open them, but NO ONE HAD VISITED, I WAS STILL WITHOUT INTERNET. I then asked to be transferred to a supervisor.
I spoke to team leader Durghesh, based in Mumbai who told me he was extremely sorry for the inconvenience and that he would set up a new complaint (now complaint number 141112992, 15 Nov) and that he would make sure that my problem was resolved and investigate why my complaints had been getting closed without anyone showing up or actually fixing my issue. In the morning I finally received a call from a tech support engineer who told me he would visit. The following day, they replaced my modem (the previous one was completely faulty the engineer informed me).
Yes, geniuses, I do know that IE8 requires Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.
What were they thinking?
Luckily for them, Chrome auto-corrects the address. Safari on the other hand, isn't so smart.
Actually, first of all, I do want to thank you. I mean, waiving my renewal fee and giving me lifetime validity on my phone - pure genius and you guys do maintain the best offers in the market, no doubt about that!
However I have a slight peeve.
You have a 'more international' option, wherein I get added credit for a limited time, but only for dialing international numbers. To be clear, I cannot use this credit for a local call.
You have an 'out of credit' call option, which allows me to make (only) local calls if I run out of credit on my phone. Super.
On the given day, I had credit in my 'more international' plan, but ran out of regular credit.
So when I needed to urgently dial a local number, I got the You do not have enough credit in your regular account to make this call. Fair enough.
I dialed in to the out of credit option, which was kind enough to tell me, You have enough balance on your phone, so you cannot use the out of credit option if you have credit.
So I cannot use my international credit to make a local call, my out of credit option to call local calls says I have balance (in my international credit which I cannot use for the local call I want to make)...so I can't make the call.
What's the point?
Picture the scene. Your big corporate meeting, people flying down from Europe for a day. Let's all meet they said. We insist we have everyone. Schedule for late Thursday afternoon? Super.
I coordinate with a local contact to attend. Oh, I can't make it, I have to pick up my kids Thursday afternoon. Right. How about a different time? Yea, that's fine.
My battery proceeded to die in the evening. So he called me, and I missed it. Around 10 p.m., when I got around to checking e-mail, I see a "I was expecting a call from you." There was another e-mail regarding a project our companies were partnering on. I had an issue with it, and it was urgent, so I replied questioning his e-mail.
His response five minutes later: "I did not hear back from you regarding the meeting." I replied I did not get a confirmation so I will get back to him on that in morning. And well, you didn't answer my question.
I message him after the meeting was confirmed in the morning. He proceeds to call me and say "This is why I was trying to call you yesterday. I can't make the new time" Eh, what now?!
