Simply Me
Saturday, June 5, 2010
What an IDEA sirji!!!
So we finally got an IDEA SIM... While that in itself is not exactly an interesting blog worthy news, the events that led up to buying it sure seem to be worth penning or rather typing down...
It all started Thursday last week or the 27th to be precise... When I called amma when I went for break, I got a number cannot be reached message... If you are an Airtel user, you would know this can be irritatingly normal. I left it at that and called on the land line... Everything is fine amma says... OK... Life goes on as usual the next day.. amma gets a couple of calls on her cell and makes some outgoing calls as well... But as evening approaches she starts getting messages which say 'Call 9890098900.' when I call her, I get 'This number does not exist.' I come home and amma says... Something is wrong, I suddenly started getting the message and now there is no service... Try restarting it or putting the SIM back in she says... OK... That's what I do and still no service.. SIM registration Failed it says... OK.. So I call 9890098900 from my cell... (Yeah I use airtel despite the large number of dropped calls too.) Madam, this number is not in our database... Please visit our Airtel office comes the reply from the Call Centre female...
The office near Karnatak High School is a small office with two ladies at the help desk... who seem absolutely disinclined to help... Prepaid number? Are you sure? This number does not exist in our system... There's a phone there... Call 999 from that number... OK, immediate reply on the other side... On comes a guy who starts off in marathi... No probs... Here's the deal... Our number is disconnected and the lady here says the number does not exist in your database... What do we do now? Well your number definitely does not exist... Did you get any verification calls? No... Was this number bought outside Maharashtra? No, Pune. How many months have you been using this number? 6 years... 6 YEARS??? Yes 6 years... Hmmm, whats your name... Its registered under Lata Shenoy's name... Ok Lataji... (He suddenly starts speaking in Hindi for some reason now... Like because my last name is Shenoy, I suddenly am unable to speak marathi... Whats with people? I have seen this happening so many times!!! Well anyway thats beside the point) Could you give me your alternate contact number... address... last recharge date? Well point is the number is not in our database. What is your expectation? That you want the same number? Yes and we had a balance as well. (Rs. 250+ is quite inconsequential when it comes to telling people who have known this number for 6 years... but still, I wanted to point this out) OK ma'am, we'll call you on the alternate contact number (I gave both land line and my cell number to be on the safe side) within 72 hours. OK, and what if I DON'T get a call in 72 hours? If... you... DON'T... get a call in 72 hours? Aap ye number 6 saal se istemaal kar rahe hain, to humara bhi kuch farz banta hai aapki taraf... You have spoken to me for like 15 minutes, I'll ensure you get a call back. I'll discuss with my seniors. OK...
Apparently, 'ye number 6 saal se istemaal kar rahe hain' isse koi farz nahi banta... We did not get a call back. We had resigned to going back the coming Saturday. Amma suddenly got an idea on her way home from her evening walk on Thursday. She walked up to the shop where we get our balance recharge done every time and told him the situation... He immediately called up and gave the call center people a major dressing down demanding to talk to floor manager and getting a complaint number. Call back in 24 hours was guaranteed. Threaten to contact Consumer Court was the advice we received from most relatives and friends. So 24 hours hence, still no update...
We ended up back at the airtel office this morning and it was back to the same questions and I finally said to the girl, these are the same questions I had answered last week. Please tell me what we need to do now. She figured I was a crazy irate customer (the same kind we make faces at and mute the phone to scream at when things start going mad on our calls) and passed me on to her floor manager. After repeating the same question-answer session, he finally said, You'll get a call back in 24 working hours i.e. Monday. I'll call you on Monday at 6 P.M. to check if you received a call back or I'll escalate the matter he says... Too frustrated, I said OK... Wrote down his name and the new complaint number.. The one we were given earlier was incorrect apparently... only 8 digits against the actual 10 digit number... Don't know what game they were playing.
So we walked out of there and went to our usual recharge shop and got an IDEA connection. In all honesty, we needed a number quickly and this made sense. I coaxed amma into getting a non-airtel number. At least we have 2 separate connections now. Though if and when we get the number back I don't know who's supposed to be carrying around 2 cell phones... I don't get why people do that and for a person who forgets her cell at home, doesn't carry it around and needs to call from the land line to figure out where I had put it before forgotten its existence, I'm not gonna lug it around. So lets see.
Anyway, now looks like we get to explore our fourth service provider... lets see how this is... Strange that Airtel themselves were what convinced amma to change her number to IDEA when all my arguments that IDEA has cheaper call rates hadn't convinced her to give up her number and that in spite of the bad reception at home. Ab dekhte hain kya hota hai.
P.S. Other evidences:
1- When I told this to Priyanka last week, she said her brother had got frustrated with the bad airtel service and switched to IDEA...
2- I chatted with Amit this afternoon and he said his dad has this airtel lifetime validity number which he or his brother used when they visited their parents. The last time he went home, it seems the SIM did not get any service. Calling on the number redirected to another person. Apparently, since they had not recharged (note again, this is a lifetime validity number) for the past 3 months, they had recycled the number. After a lot of calls and threats to contact consumer court, the SIM was reactivated.
It all started Thursday last week or the 27th to be precise... When I called amma when I went for break, I got a number cannot be reached message... If you are an Airtel user, you would know this can be irritatingly normal. I left it at that and called on the land line... Everything is fine amma says... OK... Life goes on as usual the next day.. amma gets a couple of calls on her cell and makes some outgoing calls as well... But as evening approaches she starts getting messages which say 'Call 9890098900.' when I call her, I get 'This number does not exist.' I come home and amma says... Something is wrong, I suddenly started getting the message and now there is no service... Try restarting it or putting the SIM back in she says... OK... That's what I do and still no service.. SIM registration Failed it says... OK.. So I call 9890098900 from my cell... (Yeah I use airtel despite the large number of dropped calls too.) Madam, this number is not in our database... Please visit our Airtel office comes the reply from the Call Centre female...
The office near Karnatak High School is a small office with two ladies at the help desk... who seem absolutely disinclined to help... Prepaid number? Are you sure? This number does not exist in our system... There's a phone there... Call 999 from that number... OK, immediate reply on the other side... On comes a guy who starts off in marathi... No probs... Here's the deal... Our number is disconnected and the lady here says the number does not exist in your database... What do we do now? Well your number definitely does not exist... Did you get any verification calls? No... Was this number bought outside Maharashtra? No, Pune. How many months have you been using this number? 6 years... 6 YEARS??? Yes 6 years... Hmmm, whats your name... Its registered under Lata Shenoy's name... Ok Lataji... (He suddenly starts speaking in Hindi for some reason now... Like because my last name is Shenoy, I suddenly am unable to speak marathi... Whats with people? I have seen this happening so many times!!! Well anyway thats beside the point) Could you give me your alternate contact number... address... last recharge date? Well point is the number is not in our database. What is your expectation? That you want the same number? Yes and we had a balance as well. (Rs. 250+ is quite inconsequential when it comes to telling people who have known this number for 6 years... but still, I wanted to point this out) OK ma'am, we'll call you on the alternate contact number (I gave both land line and my cell number to be on the safe side) within 72 hours. OK, and what if I DON'T get a call in 72 hours? If... you... DON'T... get a call in 72 hours? Aap ye number 6 saal se istemaal kar rahe hain, to humara bhi kuch farz banta hai aapki taraf... You have spoken to me for like 15 minutes, I'll ensure you get a call back. I'll discuss with my seniors. OK...
Apparently, 'ye number 6 saal se istemaal kar rahe hain' isse koi farz nahi banta... We did not get a call back. We had resigned to going back the coming Saturday. Amma suddenly got an idea on her way home from her evening walk on Thursday. She walked up to the shop where we get our balance recharge done every time and told him the situation... He immediately called up and gave the call center people a major dressing down demanding to talk to floor manager and getting a complaint number. Call back in 24 hours was guaranteed. Threaten to contact Consumer Court was the advice we received from most relatives and friends. So 24 hours hence, still no update...
We ended up back at the airtel office this morning and it was back to the same questions and I finally said to the girl, these are the same questions I had answered last week. Please tell me what we need to do now. She figured I was a crazy irate customer (the same kind we make faces at and mute the phone to scream at when things start going mad on our calls) and passed me on to her floor manager. After repeating the same question-answer session, he finally said, You'll get a call back in 24 working hours i.e. Monday. I'll call you on Monday at 6 P.M. to check if you received a call back or I'll escalate the matter he says... Too frustrated, I said OK... Wrote down his name and the new complaint number.. The one we were given earlier was incorrect apparently... only 8 digits against the actual 10 digit number... Don't know what game they were playing.
So we walked out of there and went to our usual recharge shop and got an IDEA connection. In all honesty, we needed a number quickly and this made sense. I coaxed amma into getting a non-airtel number. At least we have 2 separate connections now. Though if and when we get the number back I don't know who's supposed to be carrying around 2 cell phones... I don't get why people do that and for a person who forgets her cell at home, doesn't carry it around and needs to call from the land line to figure out where I had put it before forgotten its existence, I'm not gonna lug it around. So lets see.
Anyway, now looks like we get to explore our fourth service provider... lets see how this is... Strange that Airtel themselves were what convinced amma to change her number to IDEA when all my arguments that IDEA has cheaper call rates hadn't convinced her to give up her number and that in spite of the bad reception at home. Ab dekhte hain kya hota hai.
P.S. Other evidences:
1- When I told this to Priyanka last week, she said her brother had got frustrated with the bad airtel service and switched to IDEA...
2- I chatted with Amit this afternoon and he said his dad has this airtel lifetime validity number which he or his brother used when they visited their parents. The last time he went home, it seems the SIM did not get any service. Calling on the number redirected to another person. Apparently, since they had not recharged (note again, this is a lifetime validity number) for the past 3 months, they had recycled the number. After a lot of calls and threats to contact consumer court, the SIM was reactivated.
Labels: Kuch na kaho..., Something Stupid...
posted by Tejaswini Shenoy at 5:56 PM
3 Comments:
HONEY! believe me IDEA is as bad... service wise. Everyone's literally breathing down my neck to change the connection. None of the cell networks fall into the "good service" slot.
I have to keep pressing the "network search" option even when I stand next to the IDEA tower. Beat that!!! and I don't have one but 3 idea connections in my name. One which I use, nother for amma and third for my husband.
AND, one more word of caution, they'll try everything to keep you from disconnecting their services (in worst case where you HAVE to chg the network). They just don't like the idea of losing a customer, but still won't do anything to retain them either
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
u get comments from south korea too? :P cool!
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