A frustrated BSNL user

This is the first post of this blog, and unfortunately a sad one. This blog post was to be posted on 23 September 2007 but was delayed because of the downtimes with my Internet connection. This post is all about a BSNL user that pays thousands of Rs and ends up on a dead phone. Right now, my basic landline BSNL connection is dead, with it my broadband is disconnected, and on my BSNL mobile am waiting for the GPRS to be activated, since 30^th of July. Digg this!

Am having BSNL landline since 1995! I got a computer in 2003. Then I applied for the dialup connection of BSNL, the slow speed of dial up is impossible to work with, I had to wait for ages before a page was loaded on the browser. Then in September 2005 I got BSNL broadband. The home 250 plan was looking impressive and I took it. At the time of subscribing to “bsnl dataone home 250” plan they never told me what they mean by the 405MB download and upload limits. I did not even get the bills till July 2006. When I tried to login to the BSNL site, for consumption checking, I always get an error. I have told BSNL about this problem many times but they did nothing about it. Finally I ended up getting a huge bill in July, which I paid. They said, the pages that I open also counts towards my download limits, and this was the reason why the bill was huge. Money was never a problem, I paid happily, am only complaining about the service.

Then I changed my plan to “home 500”. This reset my password and I was able to login on BSNL website to check how much download or upload I have done. In a few months I changed to the “UL 900” plan. Now am paying 900 Rs monthly and about 100 Rs on service tax. This plan is known as unlimited usage plan, where there will be no extra bills on download or uploads. But the bills still came, and I had to go to the BSNL office, stand in queue and meet their officers. I had to write applications and request them to cancel the extra bills and make a fresh bill. Then again I had to stand long queues and get the duplicate bill. But finally this problem is sorted, and now I only get the bills, which are genuine. But there are no explanations for the trouble caused.

Last month on 20^th July 2007, the PWD people cut down the BSNL cables by mistake, that was Friday night 11.45 PM. This made my BSNL landline phone dead, with it my BSNL broadband was also disconnected. Early this month, august 2007, after 12 days of disconnection of my dedicated BSNL broadband Data-one connection, the cables were re-joined. After that the broadband connection was re-established. The monthly fees of broadband are about Rs1000 including taxes, so half a month cut means about Rs500 loss. During this 12 days I lost Rs3000 a day form my E-commerce business. Also my valuable goodwill is lost which can be measured over the next 5 - 10 years of time. I was planning to make a case on BSNL, am still thinking about it.

The Internet connection and the phone went dead again, 23^rd August 2007, and right now am typing this blog post offline. My clients are waiting for my emails and messages, my websites are un-moderated and listings on directories are waiting for approval. This is a complete waste of money and reputation. But the BSNL is not bothered about it. The broadband people don’t take complains when the link is not available. And I have made a complain about the landline yesterday itself, from BSNL mobile. Right now an active complain already exist, also this complain from BSNL mobile costs me some money as-well.

I have also attached some pictures of the mess that has been created by PWD. I will keep you updated on this case, thanks for reading. Today is 29th of august, and my internet is finally working.