BSNL / Telephone & Internet — CHEATING BY BSNL

Dear Mr. Rao,

BSNL has been my tormentor since when I took the landline and subsequently dial-up Internet and broadband. They have thousand ways of hoodwinking the customers. Let me tell you just a few:

1. EARLY 2000: I was asked to guarantee deposit after they cut my connection by saying they did not receive my payment, though that was duly placed through post office. Then I had to cough up !500 as security deposit at Ranikuthi Exchange, Kolkata and I was told that the sum will be adjusted with bill after one year. That never took place as yet. Mind you, Before that they took the then statutory deposit of 3000 before sanctioning the phone. I tried to contact with senior personnel and each time they were either "unavailable" or "busy in meeting".

2. MID 2000: There was huge billing on the dial-up, to the tune of[protected] and I could not ever convince them that I did not use that much of Internet.

3. LATE 2000 (Ongoing) I changed my residence in between and thought to go through the customary process of "shifting" system of BSNL. Not only that took long time to materialize, but made me weary of running to their zonal head office time and again. And there is no end to the harassment: I'm still receiving "monthly billing" Mail for both the old number (that shows 0 amount by God's grace) and the new number. In between there are occasions when I had to provide "complementary sum" to the BSNL personnel who would come to repair my connection after repeated calls.

4. LATE 2000 (continued): A staff of BSNL appeared one day and offered me a "manikjod" sim card and said it's absolutely free. Eventually I lost that sim and even informed the local office, but they said they cannot help if I cannot provide the number! It's from the next month they started billing me Rs 40. And there's more! Even after I paid that sum for the last month at their authorized kiosk, the next bill on that "promised free sim: carried forward that amount to the new month's amount.

5. AND THE LATEST (JUNE 2009): Few minutes back I received a mailed bill for this month, a bundled one with Internet billing. To my amazement I found the broadband bill amounted to 1054, while my usage exceeded just 674 MB (that too according to their portal). I use a 2.5 GB Home 500 plan.

AND THERE WAS MORE: I checked my phone calls of the month of may from their "view bills online" section. I found the number o[censored]nits actually called is less than what their fortnightly meter billed for the month. It's in the tune of 50-55 units. Then I checked the bills of the previous months and found the same thing in them.

It's for our tight schedule and lackadaisical attitude they carry on with their mission to siphon thousand customers. I'm carefully preparing the dossier of their misdeeds through decades and I wish someday I'd pray for justice from the competent authorities, thus letting them playing in for some more time.