[Resolved]  Reliance Communications Limited — Billing Scam

Address:

Pune, Maharashtra

Case Summary: • Accused: Reliance Communications Ltd. • *Standard Wi-Max Broadband Package from Reliance Communications Ltd. 1. 1 Dynamic IP address 2. Unlimited bandwidth per month 3. Internet speed of 1299 kilobits per second 4. At a monthly rental of Rs. 2470.80 IN per month • Case: o Attempt to recover illegal rental fees for services not rendered, via extortion; legal threats over phone/SMS. o Charging in full for services rendered at less than 10% of the package’s quality standards specified by the company o Making repeated false claims to consumers that their service would recover from the >10% standard to satisfactory quality standards, tricking consumers and damaging their future operations, to control their own consumer attrition rates o Delaying the termination process; Not informing customers that they will continue to be charged while processing of requests at the company management level is delayed by months Note: This email has been copied; CC’d & BCC’d to representatives from Reliance Communications Ltd. directly/indirectly involved in this case, representatives of the Indian government authorities; Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, International Consumer Rights Protection Council, Ministry of Health and the Criminal Investigation Department, Maharashtra Police for their awareness of the matter, and one of our major International clients that has been primarily affected by the following issues. To, The President, ICRPC Maharastra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Administrative College, Room Nos. 1 and 2, Hazarimal Somani Marg, Bombay MH 400 001. 7th October, 2013 Dear sir, I am writing this email to you being the supreme representative of the International Consumer Rights Protection Council And as a response to the repeated legal threats from the representatives of the company Reliance Communications Ltd. for deliberately/inadvertently attempting to recover funds for services which the company has not rendered at all, plus delivering less than 10% of what the company promises to provide, which originally compelled us to discontinue with this Internet service provider, after a three-year-long relationship. The objective of this report is to shed some light on certain malpractices and mismanagement in such companies which a lot of our middle-class consumers fall victims of. Well, this time, it’s our startup company and we will not tolerate being threatened via such extortive means and misuse of the law. Therefore I am putting in some time and attempting to write up what could be considered a detailed report to help our case and others facing similar challenges, unable to communicate as effectively. Our business with Reliance Communications Ltd: One of our subsidiaries is a software company which used the Reliance Wi-Max broadband Internet line for its web application development in the servers it rents in the USA. Due to the recent downgrade in the quality of this internet line, our production was affected severely, extending our delivery timelines by over three months until we were compelled to spend 5 times more to install a leased line from a different service provider. We are a young company and have limited resources and budget to invest in some of the projects we are into. At this stage, the Reliance broadband connection seemed cost-effective if it restored its promised level of service and therefore we were willing to take the risk of waiting until their network issues were resolved, which they actively provided resolution timelines for. However, that never happened and we ended up with production losses, losing money over the dead Reliance connection, spending on a temporary solution and spending 5 times more on a Leased line connection from a different Service provider. We have been using the Wi-Max services of Reliance Broadband for over 3 years without any major setbacks or complaints until the connection speed painfully dropped down from the promised bandwidth of 1299 kbps slowing down to about 120kbps by the beginning of 2013. Such an Internet transfer speed is unusable for FTP, standard web application development/testing or Video conference calls over VOIP, so to say, this is a dial-up network speed standard while we kept paying for a Broadband level solution. We placed our first complaint in January 2013 and were told by the Reliance technical team that this issue would be resolved by the first week of February as it was widespread throughout their network. We continued to experience speed and reliability issues even after the first week. Our following complaints were closed within 24 hours (their policy of closing cases within 24 hours whether ‘actually’ resolved or ‘falsely’ resolved) stating that the resolution timeframe has been extended to the 20th of February, 2013. As expected, the issues persisted and a new deadline was allotted for resolution extending to the end of the month and then, 20th of March, therefore at the end of March, we decided to switch our internet service provider and we called Reliance to terminate our account. By the end of the day, we no longer had a valid Internet IP address which usually ranged between 123.x.x.x and 124.y.y.y. Instead, we were allotted an automatic private IP address 192.x.x.x. from their DHCP server and hence we no longer had an active internet connection, although we kept on being billed as having an active connection and a valid dynamic IP address, which we did not. By mid-March, we received a call from a Reliance representative claiming they were all set to resolve the long persistent issues with their network and requested until the end of March, 2013 to restore their service to their claimed standards. So we concluded the call with a mutual agreement that we would continue to monitor their services for an improvement by the end of the month, or else, we would want an immediate disconnection at the end of March and the representative stated that he would contact us regarding the same by the end of the month. I specifically mentioned in the call that although we have been losing money on the Reliance broadband line and spending more on a backup connection over the past three months, I was willing to take the risk until the end of March. This is because if Reliance wouldn’t improve on their services, we would have no other choice but to switch to a 5 times more expensive leased line. This wasn’t cost effective therefore we were more inclined towards using Reliance services if their quality improved to a satisfactory level. After our conversation, the broadband line was reassigned a valid dynamic IP address by the time we checked next day however, there was no improvement in the connection speed even till the beginning of April 2013. We never received any call from Reliance confirming resolution because they were aware the issues persisted. Hence, as planned, we called Reliance and requested immediate termination and just like last time, our line was turned off immediately and we no longer had an active connection to the internet or a valid IP address, which meant to us as implementation of an ‘immediate termination’ procedure. No expectations were set with us about the ‘actual termination process’ that remained and that we were to pay for it. Moreover, our subscription number was no longer valid for customer support to help track our status (We tried to confirm what was going on but no one could tell). If we knew we would be billed for months for a service that was no longer being rendered, we would have contacted a legal body such as ICRPC immediately. On the 19th of May, we received billing notification for the month of May and we assumed this was issued in error as I have heard from many others who continue to receive bills from Reliance, years after their services were terminated by the company, so we didn’t bother. We finally received an email confirmation about the termination [RCOM Service Termination Letter] of our subscription on the 22nd of May, 2013. Two people showed up representing Reliance at our offices by the next few days and the Ethernet cable, Wi-Max antenna and the modem (which were originally installed by Reliance at our premises to facilitate the connection) were handed over to them and they confirmed everything received was in order. We continued to receive payment reminder emails from Reliance now stating we owed them Rs. 5003.37. The first one was received on the 25th of May asking us to ‘clear the dues to enjoy uninterrupted services’, portraying that Reliance was still not fully aware that this connection had already been ‘interrupted’, rather terminated. Since our accountant was not sure why we were being charged an abrupt amount we rather intended to have a verbal conversation with the billing department. A representative from the Reliance billing department cleared to us, that about 2470.80 was our pending balance due for April and the rest was due for May. Although this was not decided when we spoke to Reliance the last time and we had applied for disconnection immediately on the first of April, we were not interested in paying for a month we never used the Internet at all; April. And May is totally out of question! Even then out of good will, we finally decided to clear the billing for April and the representative from the billing department settled the matter with both o[censored]s mutually agreeing. We cleared the April dues in June. At this stage, all billing had been cleared covering the month of April, 2013, although we had no active connection in April and according to Reliance, we should be paying the full rental for the month of May(incomplete month) plus interest for a delay caused because of their misleading false claims and delayed response to a termination request, also considering the fact that the line was disconnected from the Internet within hours of the termination we requested at the beginning of April. Again, had I known, I would be legally threatened for being too humble, generous and understanding towards issues faced by this company, I wouldn’t have paid Reliance a dime for all the months, the company did Not meet our needs and made our work suffer with false claims that it would restore its service standards very soon. WE paid the ultimate price. And here, I speak out for every one of those numerous ex-customers of Reliance Communications Ltd. out there, that have suffered similar extortion from this company. The following link shows how this company is involved in other type of scams. http://www.consumercourt.net.in/ ALERT: RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS DEDUCTS AMOUNT BY ILLEGALLY SUBSCRIBING TO ITS SERVICES ICRPC has received many complaints against Reliance Communications that they deduct money from your available balance by subscribing to the caller tunes, and other promotional services without your knowledge and permission to earn extra illegal money from the consumer. If you suffered due to bad services of Reliance, write [protected]@relianceada.com also complain to [protected]@trai.gov.in ALERT: RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS IMMEDIATELY SUBSCRIBES YOU TO ITS VALUE ADDED SERVICES BUT WILL NOT UNSUBSCRIBE THESE EVEN AFTER SENDING SMS FOR UNSUBSCRIPTION ICRPC has received many complaints against Reliance Communications that they will not unsubscribe easily the subscriptions for sms, whatsapp, caller tunes, data pack, etc even if you send sms for unsubscription, write [protected]@relianceada.com If they dont listen, complain to [protected]@trai.gov.in A simple Google search reveals so much more about the reputation of this company: https://www.google.co.in/search?newwindow=1&q=reliance+communications+billing+fraud&oq=reliance+communications+billing+fraud&gs_l=serp.3..30i10.179148.179713.0.179813.5.5....⇄ Boiling the situation down to the major points, here’s how we want to proceed: 1. If Reliance Communications Ltd. wishes to proceed legally based on the current case, we are ready to defend our case.. a. Claiming financial damage done to our production plus interest, as a result of Reliance Communications Ltd. falsely claiming that it would restore its services by set dates, repeatedly pushing those dates ahead for months b. refund of the monthly rentals paid plus interest for all the months Reliance has not been able to deliver up to the promised standards* of Internet service which we have paid for in Full, and c. compensation for our legal expenses, time and resources spent/wasted in defending ourselves instead of concentrating on productive government projects we are set to deliver Reliance Communications Ltd.: Please Note that we will not be clearing any additional dues, other than what we have already cleared out of our own good will. WE WILL NOT pay any money that Reliance has not provided any services for. We find it very disturbing to be threatened of legal action against us when we have done everything possible to ensure your services to us are terminated immediately therefore Reliance has no right to bill us for additional time required by their management to process a termination request, which mind you, was already applied for in the beginning of March 2013. If Reliance Communications feels its services have been used in the month of May or later, we request Reliance to please provide evidence in the form of Internet usage statistics specific to the destination paths, IP addresses and type of data transfers that we will verify with the Pune Cyber Crime division based on our trend o[censored]sage during the month of March 2013. Please note that we had already switched to another Internet connection by March therefore you will hardly find any usage statistics during this timeframe. I would also suggest that Reliance quickens its termination process from its current turnaround time of almost a month. I would like to point out a common scenario where; if a consumer is no longer able to afford the services and sends in a request to cancel the subscription immediately, Reliance with its current turnaround time would come back to this person in a few months with a bill for the time it took for them to cancel his subscription. In the event that the consumer is unable to clear that amount because he cannot afford it, Reliance would legally proceed against that person to recover the damage and that person would end up in prison and his life ruined, years wasted in prison without family, an all-time criminal record, all for not being able to pay up the price set by such companies because of their own delays. If everyone o[censored]s can imagine being in the position of that person, we would know exactly what to do once we returned from prison. On a side note, I would personally like to smack the person left and right, who created such a self-centered policy while not attempting to improve the company’s own request management timeframes. These are some reasons why this company has a large amount of grieving consumers in our own country and has not been able to establish a single International business relationship. I am confident that this case report has shed sufficient light required to uncover such extreme policies that have the potential of creating a major deviation in our peoples’ lives. I personally do not want to be threatened of legal action on my phone, over a petty billing claim. I don’t want to see text messages threatening me of legal action every morning I wake up on a pleasant note. I don’t have the time or patience for that. I believe that honesty is the best policy and I’ve build major International relationships through years because of the way we work. We don’t believe in scamming our own countrymen. We have helped the government reduce crime, we build actual software products to solve major social and government issues. We research medical therapies and cures for the global population. We make our country proud and help support the country’s economy. Therefore I wouldn’t pay a dime, if it was dishonestly asked for, with threats misusing law, especially when we have done everything to adhere by the ‘feasible’ policies of this Service provider while they went on trapping us into their prevarications. Again, whoever is responsible for harassing us via such threats, I’d advise you to halt immediately or we will have to proceed with our methods. To end with a positive note, we will be glad to cooperate in sorting this dispute via a more humanitarian manner by providing any needed information relating to this case. (For details, you may reply to this email and we would be glad to provide more information on this matter) Best regards,