Broad band Nightmare !

After a long and painful struggle with the broadband providers in Chennai , I ve decided to vent some of my frustration here . The whole thing began last year when broadband at home to me meant unlimited access to the world wide web and total freedom to go wherever and do whatever without worrying about any firewalls and moral policing. This dream of mine and the ability to afford it made me register for the bsnl dataone connection . This was supposed to use the land lord's (house owner's) land line connection as we (me and my room mate ) were erstwhile bachelors with little or no use for land lines when all things good or bad happen at work ! And so one fine , a bsnl guy comes to our place and says they are ready to set it all up! I was really excited and they managed to get it up and running in a mere 2 days ( we ll come to the comparisons with other services later) . This particular connection needed a login and password . At that time , it seemed fine , I mean how much trouble is it to login each time u turn on the comp?? But eventually it became evident there was a reason for this . The resources apparently were n't up and running all the time . And when someday I would come home really excited and just waiting to do some serious blogging / quaking , the ISP would f*** my dreams and just meanly deny any pleasure in life. Ok , sometimes broadband just doesn't connect you say, come on this is India and its a govt. organisation you are talking about . Anyway it used to be good whenever it did connect and I ve played some good games in Quake , and also downloaded some useless yet bulky files in the 2 am to 8 am slot which promises to make you an insomniac for sure ! After a couple of months we got our first bill , as part of the telephone bill and to our collective chagrin , we got some extra download bill ... something like 1000 bucks extra! Ok, we decided to really watch our backs and also our downloads and with extra care we managed to avoid any extra payment the following time. Again we followed the 2 to 8 funda and yet again we were f***ed big time ! So finally after getting no responses from the bsnl ppl, we decided to lose the registration fee and get this huge blood sucker off our backs . After heaving a sigh of relief , we got back to our humdrum lives .

I really missed quaking on broadband and after a couple of months , both of us ( hardcore gamers) decided to try out airtel broadband of which we had got some rave reviews from office folk and friends . It was startlingly simple to get in touch with a PR guy and also set up a meeting . The plan had to be unlimited download and at least 256 kbps ,and since we had two of us, we decided to go for a 256 kbps , unlimited which came up to a steep 1k nearly. We didnt care, all we wanted was to be logged on happily ever after . We rested with fond dreams and all the unpleasant memories of bsnl stashed away. After paying a 500 buck registration , some of the engineers came over and had a look at the existing infrastructure at the locality and came to the conclusion that a new "box" was needed to be put up on the wall of the house we lived in . I think that would act like a junction for more connections to be put up in our street. It was fine by me , but it wasnt for the house owner ...so at the end of the day , we started off with 500 bucks lesser than before and still no broadband! To get that money back , I had to go through a few phone calls and angry smses for a week or so . I did get back a DD with the original amount of Rs.500 , and that was the end of the airtel episode.

Afte another month of no internet , I decided to take the plunge once again and got in touch with Hathway Cable Internet providers. At that time I was ill informed about cable broadband and also the way this particular company operated. After meeting one the PS guys who was properly polite and even pretended to be from home town , I ended up paying Rs 2645 as refundable deposit + registration fees + rent for one month of 256 kbps unltd. I was really impressed when the cable guys came the next day and completed their job of getting the cable into my room. The next day which was a saturday the modem was in place and sometime before sunday afternoon , the connection was up and running. It was really cool and I was patting myself on my back. My new computer had enough bytes to chew on , I thought . But this joy was shortlived as I started downloading some big files , (quake videos and stuff) ... the download rate started off with something like 30 kbps which is pretty decent and then it just decayed steadily and came to 5 kbps!! which was literally daylight robbery . The time it would take to download for a 10 MB file was more than a few hours . By the time one of the hathway guys came to collect the "satisfied" signature from me , I was fuming through my ears. I refused outright to sign any document until he set the connection right. The engineer (thats what he called himself) tried downloading more than one file at a time and thankfully came to the same conclusion . He made me use the silly email service provided by hathway to send an e-mail to chennaihelp@hathway.net , which by the way I suspect is automated to reply " You request has been forwarded to the appropriate section. " or something like that . Anyway , the first time it said this , I was taken in by the promptness of the reply. The engineer took back the modem for "testing" and since then I ve not seen him or the modem again !!

After this incident I mailed these people and called up their customer support many times. The call would be received by a young guy/ girl , probably just out of college , who would n't know nuts about what is going on about my problem. I guess its not their fault that the information is not available to them . After many frustrating calls and irritated emails with names of the people involved and also the obscence fees collected for nothing , still there was no satisfying reply or information about anything. Finally on one fine day (or so i thought) I decided to go their office and confront them outright . After taking some vague directions from Ramana( a friend who I guess knows Chennai pretty well or at least pretends to ..) , I got to their office on Eldham's road sometime in the afternoon . It was a pretty small place I should say. Being used to somewhat bigger workstations and generally everything else at my office , this was pretty cramped . The security guard directed me to the first floor (ground floor is for the Cable division). I was wondering how many people these people must have taken for a ride as I walked up the stairs. I entered the office and right in front was the receptionist , a middle aged , more towards the younger side woman with a disinterested and distracted look . On enquiring I was told someone would come and speak to me. So, I settled down on the musty sofa and was wondering what harsh words would convey my anger and frustration rightly and get things done. I had a look at a notice board placed in front of the entrance . There was a company motto which said something about satifsying the customer expectations always and trying to go beyond that . "Ironically funny " would be a nice comment to attach to it I thought . There were some brochures lying on the table which promised to show what broadband could really do ! Now that I knew what it could do , I was kicking myself mentally for paying that money in the first place.
I got back to my perch and after a few minutes , a really small and shrunken guy with some kind of uniform came to me . I had to speak in Tamil to him .He asked me for the bill which I held. Apparently he wanted some details in it , but I was a bit more careful now after the milk was spilt. I refused to give it to him . After a few more minutes another really tall guy came to me. He looked well dressed and the look on his face was something like embarassment and fear and a bit of professionalism . I explained my plight and added a few more descriptive phrases for effect . He went back in and some conversation ensued which I could hear through my super dull hearing ( guess it was loud) . He came back and said something like
"The process is underway , the Bombay office will have to approve this and as soon as that happens you will get back your money .This will take around 20 days ".
I thought of asking them to do something and return it immediately . But this guy seemed somewhat sincere , he was n't begging and pleading like the others before him , he just stated it matter of factly . I decided to go with my sixth sense and said "ok fine " and went home .

After nearly a 3 weeks of visiting their office , I decided to call them up and find out whats happening . The billing centre put me in touch with some guy called "Ramesh" who promised me vehemently that I would get my money within ten 10 days . Again after 10 days , the same guy said that it was not possible until the first week of the next month , thats april , because of the financial year end or something. I am not too savvy about that , and after promising that I would take legal action against them after that , I kept my phone down yet again in failure .

And that brings me to the present where I am typing out this blog hoping that it might help someone not to get into such avoidable messes . The best thing to avoid such things is to enquire from 3 - 4 people about the service they get from their providers and of course look through google / wikipedia or something . I did all this a little late and came to the conclusion that among all the providers here , airtel gives a good connection , consistent and with less problems. Their PR guys are polite and try hard to get things done . And most importantly , they returned my money with a short delay of a week or so , which is ok-ok. Tata indicom , I heard is ok with some people who don't face any problems after installation. But others say that getting any service is a nightmare ! BSNL is similar to the previous one , their bills are really difficult to believe though . They don't even have a reliable way to keep track of your download status (amount used up so far) and other basic amenities . Matter(a fellow broadband victim) , got a bill of 7k for some month!! Which would mean that he downloaded around 3-4 GB in excess of 1 GB excluding the 2am to 8am slot , which is quite impossible . Other providers I don't know about , it would be interesting to get some input about them as well from anyone reading this.

After much pain and damage , I ve decided to NOT get a broadband connection in Chennai anymore , even if it means no online Quake and less blogging :( . A costly lesson , I hope well learnt .

-railmani