Tarun Dua

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.