to bdgarg@bsnl.co.in
cc pg_haryana@bsnl.co.in,pg_ab@bsnl.co.in
date Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:34 PM
subject Escalation of Grievance

Dear Mr. Garg,

1. I had applied for change of broadband plan(from home-250 to Home-UL-1350) on phone number almost a month ago around 15th June by submitting a written application duly signed for after the local telephone exchange insisted that it can't be done on phone. Since then only once they called up within 2 days and told me that the plan hasn't yet changed due to technical reasons they didn't elaborate and after that deadening silence.
2. I have been regularly contacting 01732-231017 on the status and I haven't got any positive response from them, infact most of the time the phone is not picked up.
3. I have followed the TRAI recommended method of
a) Calling the Call Center toll free number provided by the BSNL 18004241600 wherein they expressed in-ability to get the change done.
b) Called the nodal officer's at 0171-2603691 and 0171-2640050, the former doesn't pick up the phone and the latter has not responded back since one week.
c) I called you on your number and I was told you were in a meeting.

4. Kindly change my Broadband plan its one month overdue and BSNL continues to bill me at atrociously high dataflow prices making my usage of Internet un-tenable for the desired purpose. I shall be forced to seek disconnection of phone line if this grievance is not
resolved.

5. And yes I think BSNL is an ugly, inefficient and un-ethical monopoly and in any civilized country other than India this kind of behavior would invite heavy regulatory fines on the company.

No Thanks
-Tarun

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Context:
BSNL is the only provider of Broadband in my small town of Yamunanagar. And they are fugly monopolists. Airtel's behavior appears saintly in comparison to these 'fine folks'

Update 16-JUL-2008:

Next day the plan change happened and I got a phone call, 'aapka broadband plan change kar diya hai'. No I am not grateful to them. I think the turnaround time of one month is not acceptable nor is the the un-enviable uptime of services. But it is such a relief to be able to listen to music on shoutcast and being able to watch 'educational' videos on Youtube.

Update 17-JUL-2008:

What worked: I don't know really which approach worked with BSNL. Apart from the above escalation process I also complained to DoT ( Department of Telecommunications) through the ticketing system at Grievance portal for netizens of Indian State and from yesterday since the plan was changed have gotten half a dozen confirmation phone calls from Yamunanagar Telephone Exchange, Ambala Telephone Exchange and last one from Ministry of Communication. Previously a complaint with Grievance Portal for getting the BSNL Portal ID had also worked. BSNL Portal ID is required by broadband subscribers to view their dataflow usage if they are on a dataflow limited plan. To give you an idea of rationing of my usage of Internet, in the first 15 days of July I sent and received only 500 MB of traffic @2Mbps however the next day on 16th July I added another 500MB of dataflow from the rate unlimited connection of 512Kbps.

Bharti Airtel Ltd is one of the better ISPs in India. However their chief problem has been the lot of un-solicited pre-recorded voice calls and SMS spam they generate to annoy their customers in their quest for VAS profits. Advice to them: Get back to basics and fire your fugly marketers, reduce expenses and provide what people want, there is a lot of market in small towns where BSNL is the evil monopoly and your next billion rupee revenue is assured by expanding over there. Quality of service and billing was not an area they were castigated much until now. As a shareholder who holds a puny number of shares I hate to see them annoy paying customers like Balaji and yours truly. My medium term tip for Bharti Airtel stock would be 'SELL' they are going the Vodafone way of growth through acquisitions without worrying about existing customers.

Update May 24, 2008: Bharti has pulled out of the MTN acquisition deal. Good for them and good for its customers.

Each BSNL employee attending a customer phone call gives you another number. Its a monopolistic crime of un-imaginable proporations against indian broadband users. If there are a lot of people who feel the same please consider launching a movement to surrender BSNL phonelines. Convince your relatives to surrender a BSNL phoneline and serve the nation.

It is criminal to support inefficiency of BSNL through public money. Please consider writing to your elected representatives in favor of privatization of BSNL.

After visiting BSNL exchange 6 times and finally managing to get a broadband connection at my parent's place in Yamunanagar. One and a half months later I am still trying to get the authentication details to BSNL's portal for viewing dataflow http://bbservice.bsnl.in. Not that the damn site works anyway.

Update:
Interestingly amongst BSNL+MTNL customers some 4.4 million(100K/month approx.) plus wired phone lines were surrendered by their customers between Apr-2006 to Feb 2008.
Source DOT Network Status Feb 2008 .The same has been uploaded at my site because GOI sites have this annoying habit of removing content so if you are unable to access the previous link try this one DOT Network Status Report 2008

BSNL employees were seen in a procession under some red colored communist banners on MG Road in Bangalore today demanding bonus. Apparently they didn't couldn't hear the silent and sometimes verbose taunts of the members of the common public(including yours truly) as to why they don't deserve a bonus. There doesn't seem to be a reason for strike in 2007 in India. With telecom sector booming, if these employees are actually producing any useful output, then any of the private sector telcos should be happy to hire them right!!!.
Message from this blog to BSNL employees
"TAKE A HIKE"