108 Ambulance — absolutely undependable service from 108 - pathetic

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

We reside at parel tank road, mumbai. Last week, on thursday, 21st february in the evening we had an emergency as our old neighbour (Aged 89 years) was not responding. We decided to call the cardiac ambulance on helpline 108.
We made the following calls and spoke to different people :
A) 1st call at 8.37 pm. The guy asked us all the details re. Patient’s name, age, problem, detailed address (Which we gave). He said we would receive an sms which he never received.
B) 2nd call after 20 minutes again same questions. We answered all again.
C) between our first call i. E. 8.37 pm and 9.35 pm, we must have called atleast 10 times asking when the ambulance shall finally reach us. Same questions. Same response – ambulance last left from jj hospital and is on the way.
D) finally, we had to call from another mobile. They insisted on giving them the number from which we had called from earlier (Although we gave them the patient’s name etc again).
After more than one and a half hours, we were really irritated and had to call again from another phone.
One lady answered the call and connected us to a doctor. After holding on for more time, we were told by the doctor that there was a fire somewhere and hence they could not reach the destination and so we have to book a fresh ambulance through help desk 108.
The sms reached us the next day, i. E. Friday 22nd february at 1528 hours.

We did not receive a single call from either 108 or the driver.
Finally, we had to book another ambulance through another source which arrived in the next half an hour.
We wasted more than an hour and a half. This is not the kind of service one expects for an emergency service.
Request someone senior to kindly look into the matter and give us an update as to exactly what was the problem with the delay in sending the ambulance – which never arrived eventually.

We need better staff to handle such critical situations likes ambulances etc. They should be very quick and dependant – but our experience was exactly the opposite.