[Resolved]  BSNL — BroadBand/Landline not working

Address:

Nagpur, Maharashtra

Dear Sir,

Sunil Kumar Garg,
Sr GM(NWP)CFA
BSNL Appeliate Authority
O/o CGMT, Maharashtra Circle, Mumbai.

Subject : Dead Telephone line no :[protected] and Broadband complaint registered.
Complaint reference numbers : [protected] for Dead Phone
[protected] for Broadband not working

The concerned Telephone number I,e,[protected] comes under the VNIT Exchange facility located near the IT Park, Nagpur. The first complaint was registered on 24th March on the phone no 2222198, and complaint reference number [protected] was received. There was no work performed in this regard for full 5 days.

My Grandfather who is 78 yrs of age, a Senior Citizen, himself approached the officers at the Exchange facility on 29th March and pleaded with them to take action for necessary repairs. He met with Mr Ninge and Mr Hatwar at the customer cell. He is a heart patient and requires Landline for Medical Emergencies. He personally took an acknowledgement on a drafted letter, a copy of which is in the attachment to this mail.

Still to our horror, no work was performed till 7th March (Saturday) and the line remained dead, when I personally visited them to understand the issues. On record and paper, which I had personally seen with them, Mr Ninge had forwarded the complaint to the exchange department on 31st March and subsequently again on 2nd April-12. This complaint was addressed to Mr Chandel in the exchange department. But it seems Exchange department paid no heed to this complaint as their complaint register did not have any details with our landline number. Mr Patel then registered a complaint in front of me in his register and tried to rectify the problem. There was some issue with Dish Lamp, and the correction was assured by Monday.

I again personally met Mr Wetey, in charge of the Exchange facility and he assured me that all actions will be taken. He talked to one, Mr Wankhede, incharge of the M&B Facility under the exchange and promised to get the work done soon. I stressed the importance of the landline, owing to the Senior Citizen being involved for MEDICAL EMERGENCIES. Since there were atleast 10,000 lines getting diverted to new technology, ours WAS PROBABLY GIVEN LOW PRIORITY.

By evening on March 7th, the landline was partially repaired. There was a humming noise still ongoing and the BROADBAND COMPLETELY STOPPED WORKING. By Monday, we had cross-connections in the landline and were unable to make/receive proper calls, along with non-working broadband services. We tried making more complaints through 198 service, but it said that the previous complaints were not resolved as of now.

Since 9th March, me and my Grandfather have given a call to Mr Wetey everyday, sometimes from our landline, sometimes from our mobile and he has been politely assuring us of better and repaired services everyday. He was to send a service engineer to our home, but the whole week even till today, ie. 16th March, no one has come to repair the lines. All our efforts and pleadings have been falling on deaf ears. If you want, you can check the records and you will be able to find out that everyday, we gave a follow-up call to Mr Wetey[protected].

From 16th April onwards, when there was absolutely no resolution to our problems, we started contacting the NODAL OFFICER Mr T.B. Wankhede (AGM, PRO) on[protected],[protected]. We sent them a mail also on the id : [protected]@bsnl.co.in. We had to send the e-mail thrice to them. We demanded an acknowledgement on receipt of the e-mail but that was denied on pretext of problem not being resolved yet. This was preposterous.

When we were about to send a FAX on[protected], the PRO Officer Bhupem informed that the FAX Cartridge was exhausted and thus they cannot receive the fax. Such is the apathy of BSNL NODAl office that we cant even get a formal acknowledgement for the complaint registered. Mr Wankhede was polite but the problem remains unresolved.

We gave a call everyday to Mr Wankhede till 20th April for resolution and status of the problem. The Broadband still remained inactive. Mr Wankhede asked us to contact Mr Ninge from VNIT Exchange but since our issues were falling on deaf ears even at the Nodal office, we decided to approach the Appeliate authority. (Sunil Kumar Garg, Sr GM(NWP)CFA, Mumbai)

To our utter surprise, the number mentioned on the BSNL website : http://www.bsnl.co.in/pg/pg1.htm for the Appeliate Authority does not connect at all. We were back to square one, with no place to go.

We eventually contacted the PGM Office of BSNL on[protected]. We repeated the issue here as well, and can only hope something will happen. We got a call from Mrs Dev who did ask the issues and whom all we had contacted and their responses.

We are extremely dissatisfied with the grievance mechanisms, the hierarchy, the blame games and the no-show of the service personnel. With such age of competition, we expected better services to loyal customers like us who have remained with BSNL for several decades.. Private players offer resolutions within 3 days, and here with BSNL, we have been regularly following up since 20 days, but in vain.

We are harassed and will strongly write about this in Nagpur leading newspapers.

This way of being treated by BSNL is the only reason why we had to port our 50 nos. Corporate Mobile connection to a better service provider a few months back. We guess there is no other option but to disconnect the landline altogether. The grievance mechanism of BSNL is in shambles and a disappointment to the PSU.

We request you to treat this matter with utmost urgency. We have taken a lot of pains writing to you, visiting your personnel, and making several calls here and there. We feel helpless. With my grandfathers medical emergencies, if anything goes wrong, we will have no choice but to blame BSNL services for their negligence and carelessness in handling customer complaints.

We hope you will be able to take immediate action.

In anticipation, a frustrated customer,

Siddharth Malani
[protected]