Reliance Communications — I was harassed through advocate notice, to pay bill without prior intimation, for a poor performing data card.

Address:

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

I bought a reliance 3G data card, # - [protected], by first week of March-2015. I bought the data card based on the advertisement given stating that it would deliver up-to 14.7 MBPS and me hoping to get at least 2 to 3 MBPS speed. After activation, I came to know immediately that it is not capable of delivering even 10 KBPS in my locality. I complained in the customer care and they wanted 3 days to solve the speed problem, complaint number[protected]. So, I have a data card that does not work in my locality and it kept running and we made use of it up-to 5 GB, out of the promised 40 GB per month, for the month of March-15. I live in Saidapet, area back to Guindy industrial estate which is like heart of Chennai. Repeatedly attempted to reach the customer care to have the speed problem resolved for me referring the already created complaint number and the response I got was … "your complain is still in solving status and the back end team will reach out to you to resolve this". I escalated my problem up-to Boban C Mathews’ of Reliance branch Nungampakkam Chennai, who I think is head of customer support department and still the problem was not resolved. By now it was already 15th March-2015 and I was becoming very impatient. Then I realised that no action was taken even after my repeated calls to the customer care centres. I did try to deactivate it, made several attempts to do so, but the C-CARE officials would somehow persuade me to wait for 3 more days, asking me to see if it is getting solved or not. They made promises which they knew were false. On one such call with the customer care, the person gave me an interaction ID [[protected]] which I could use to avail waiver in bill amount as the internet connection was not good enough since I bought it. In 3rd week of March, yes … I lost around 3 weeks without good internet and suffered with this slow data card connection, finally decided to deactivate it for good this time. I called the customer care and got it deactivated on 17th March-15. The customer-care official told me that I had to wait for 7 days so that the connection gets fully deactivated. The deactivation request ID given to me was[protected]. I eventually forgot about this and moved on to MTS data card. But after 2 weeks or so after the deactivation request, I somehow remembered about this data card and called to reliance Cust-CARE to know if it got deactivated or not and got to know that it’s migrated to prepaid card and I own reliance nothing. I got this confirmed specifically in the call from the Cust-CARE executive. I asked them why they made it as prepaid when I specifically requested to deactivate the number; the response was that, it was me who requested that it be migrated to pre-paid. But, I did not request in any of the calls that I made to reliance customer-care [all my calls are recorded and they can verify]. I did not get a single message or an email intimation stating that I owe Reliance rupees 517 for the data card used as a post-paid connection. Suddenly, I got a call on 11th April afternoon from an unknown number and the info was, I have to pay around rupees 517 for the data card which I stopped using and the caller mentioned that I had to pay it on or before 12th. I again called reliance customer care and asked why I was not intimated the least in a message that I have to pay so much of amount and I did not get a proper answer for that. They also surprised me by saying that I used 11 GB [this was wrong as the data card was not capable of delivering even 100 KBPS consistently for 2 minutes]. I wanted clarity on some points which I listed below from Reliance. Why couldn’t they correct the speed problem even 2 weeks after the complaint was raised? When I raised a request to deactivate it, why was this modified to a pre-paid connection? Even when a data card is moved from post to pre, what was stopping them from giving me an itemization bill which would show the usage properly? The data card person told that I won’t get an itemized bill as the connection is prepaid now. I was pouring my frustration to one of the customer care person and expressed that, my time, energy are being wasted on calling customer care person to get my speed problem resolved, she was good enough to give me interaction ID [[protected]] for getting a waiver in bill amount. Now, I got to know that even that ID couldn’t be used because my connection is modified to pre-paid. Post-paid number generated waiver ID couldn’t be used here. !!! [on 11st April, this person gave me another interaction ID that I could use to get waiver in the final bill amount of 517, that is [protected]] Technically speaking I lost rupees 1, 617 for the data card which did not perform to my satisfaction and I ended up requesting them to deactivate the data card connection and give me a full bill waiver as the entire experience caused me mental agony and frustration. It was not accepted at all and it was worst customer service ever faced by me till now. To my surprise, on 21st April-2015, Reliance sent me a legal notice through its CROU department [Chennai High court advocate Mr R. Venkatesan M.A, LLB.] mentioning that I was avoiding bill payment and has evaded their calls deliberately and they have sent men to collect the bill (which they never did) and I evaded them too!!!. This had caused me immense distress, frustration, mental pain. I never had any issues in my life with law and order and this notice from an advocate made me feel like a criminal. This made subsequent days agonising. I ended-up paying the full amount of rupees 517 on 22nd April’2015 which ideally should have been waived by Reliance for all the hardship I went through [Bill register number – 7358]. Paid the amount in the Reliance web world outlet office, 6A Saidapet Jeenis Road, Lakshmi tele services. Like rubbing salt in fresh wound, Reliance web world employee told that they cannot make use of the interaction ID that I got latest on 11th April [[protected]] to give me a waiver in the bill amount. I need Reliance to do a monetary compensation or Rs 1, 00, 000 for the suffering that I underwent for no reason of mine and I want them to return my money that I paid for the data card and bill amount or Rs 1617 for the data card and bill.