[Resolved]  Tata Indicom Broadband — Poor service

I took a Tata Indicom WL-Broadband Combo Plan in May 2007, but decided to terminate the connection after only about 4-5 months because of the following reasons :

1.) My primary aim was to avail of broadband services - but this service was frequently down (usually on
weekends when I needed it most). I raised around 10 complaints (ticket # 2564996, 2764634, 3248000, 3591332 etc) within a 3 month period (and that was when I had the patience to sit through their call centers long wait times) - each time I was told that an engineer would revert on the next working day, but not once did I receive a return call. The connection would get restored by itself, sometimes after a gap of 7-8 days!

2.) I was once charged for exceeding my usage limit (i.e 900 MB) when this was not the case - the online
logs showed usage of ~ 800 MB). The broadband customer support accepted the mistake and said the excess amount would be credited to me in the next payment cycle but this never happened.

So these were my primary causes of dissatisfaction -

- I am not sure they had adequate infrastructure/bandwidth in place to support all the customers in my area, to prevent the frequent outages on weekends and other high-usage times.

- They don't have a consolidated helpdesk for the wireline and broadband services? Tata Indicom is one entity for customers and it is frustrating to be shuttled between 2 different departments for billing and other issues.

- Helpdesk staff need to be more professional and prompt in dealing with complaints.

However, they have still not disconnected the service and continue sending bills (I even sent my termination request to 'customercare.[protected]@tatatel.co.in', but no response till date)! They also sent a letter threatening legal action in Feb'08 as I had not cleared my dues...hmm, I wonder how much one could sue them for in a consumer court.

This is another characteristic I have noticed of Tata Indicom - they just make it so hard for the consumer to disconnect. My parents who have a landline connection in Pune got it disconnected last month, and they were told that although the number would be disconnected within 15 days of their request, the equipment would be collected within 90 days, and the security deposit refunded 30 days after that! So you have to wait around 120 days to get your money back...they sure don't mention this while selling the product. DoT/TRAI should come up with clear-cut regulations on service support and termination for telecom providers to prevent harassment of customers. My recommendation is to go with Bharti Airtel, BSNL/MTNL.