[Resolved]  Reliance Communications — Threatening calls from RCOM

Address:

Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh

My Reliance Broadband connection No. [protected]

On May 1st, 2013 I have received a call from one Mr. Naresh Kumar (Number: [protected]) claiming to be the Duty Officer of the Notice department from the Delhi High Court. He mentioned that there was a case against my mother, and mentioned that there was a complaint against her for outstanding amounts to be paid to some company (Note: he did not mention which company) but made some reference to TRAI. He mentioned that the notice would be despatched by 2 PM from the Delhi High Court to the Hyderabad High Court, following which my mother would have to appear before court & probably arrested. He gave me the details of the lawyer who had filed the complaint, and asked me to contact him to enquire about this. The lawyer's name was S.K.Sharma (number: [protected]), and when contacted he mentioned that this was a case filed on behalf of Reliance Communications, to whom apparently we owed money for an outstanding bill for July & August 2011. S.K.Sharma advised me to go to nearest Reliance webworld and call him up from there, so that he can talk to the guy there, and facilitate the payment of Rs.1,500 before 2 PM. The notice would therefore be cancelled and the case could be discharged following the settlement.

This was apparently related to an outstanding bill amount, for July 2011 for Rs. 521 (for which I was asked to pay Rs 1,500 – would love to see how this amount was arrived at). This bill was generated after I disconnected the Reliance Broadband services and had clarified to the customer service department & provided the explanations to the person who had contacted me over e-mail that I was not accountable for a bill which was generated when I had requested for the discontinuation of the service and had not used the services. The disconnection request itself was a great pain with full of pathetic responses, replies, answers and customer service by the Reliance customer care guys. I have a list of reference numbers to actually get the service disconnected – for which the RCOM customer service rep gave a lame excuse that their staff came to our house but there was no one at home (which in fact was an utter lie as we are a joint family with people present at home irrespective of the time of the day)

Though I panicked at first, better sense prevailed & I searched the web for similar instances; & to my relief found thousands of such complaints. It’s unfortunate that Reliance Communications has to resort to such practices to harass common people, for bills which are charged erroneously in the first place.

Sharath Kumar
On behalf of my Mother