Dead Man Talking !

[Arun 795]

Express India, Mumbai, March 21

Rs 31,125. That’s the latest cellphone bill of Dattaram N Shinde, a resident of Garib Mohalla in Kurla.

Problem is, Shinde’s been dead for four years.

‘‘In February, we received a cellphone bill from Reliance IndiaMobile stating that my father owed Rs 23,588.49 plus a previous balance of Rs 10,537.64 for the period between January and February 2004. My father passed away in March 2000,’’ says son Santosh (24), an autorickshaw driver.

The bill is surprising, to say the least. ‘‘I am the sole breadwinner of the family. We can’t even afford a landline let alone think of applying for a cellphone,’’ he adds.

The bill only exposes loopholes in the mobile application process. ‘‘To apply for a mobile phone, all one needs is the latest electricity bill and Rs 500,’’ says their neighbour Bharat Sawant. ‘‘I know of other cases in our area where documents have been forged or stolen to apply for a mobile,” adds Sawant. He says the Shindes did not receive their November 2003 electricity bill. They suspect someone stole the bill to buy the cellphone.

Reliance Infocomm officials admit they get about three to four cases involving identity theft every month. ‘‘It’s a major concern in our industry. We require the original electricity or telephone bill for activation of services and it’s the dealers who verify documents. We will look into the matter,” says Jimmy Mogal, head, corporate communication, Reliance Infocomm.

He admits it’s tough to nab the culprits since the documents submitted are original. ‘‘There’s no way of knowing if the documents have been stolen,’’ says Mogal.

Meanwhile, an anguished Santosh is trying to clear the mess. He’s spent Rs 150 on the lawyer’s fee and has lost out on a day’s work.

‘‘I had to pay the lawyer to draft a complaint letter to Reliance and the police,’’ he says.

‘‘I hope Reliance will reimburse me.’’

[Chirag 5]

Billing problems for Reliance are tremendous, but we have other operators too having the same... Keep reading...

Customer No Longer The King For Cellular Operators

Financial Express : SHABANA HUSSAIN

CHENNAI: Case 1: “I was a customer of AirTel, later I moved to Hutch and now I have a BSNL connection. Time and again, I have put up with the inept, ignorant and antagonistic customer service representatives across the mobile service providers. For instance, when I was a Hutch customer I had opted for the roaming facility. Safe in the knowledge that I had roaming, I went on a business tour, when to my dismay I discovered that Hutch had failed to activate the service. This is just one instance of what indifferent customer representatives can do,” says Ambarish, a 27-year-old executive with a public relation firm.

Case 2: “I am disgusted at the way the customer care division of RPG (now AirCell) functions. I have not received my mobile phone bill for the past eight months and each time I lodged my complaint, the representatives repeated like robots that the matter will be taken care of. However, that has not happened. In fact, I am tired of receiving insincere assurances from customer service people who have an overall ‘we don’t care attitude’,” says Madhumita, a 35-year-old teacher.

The case studies do not end here. In fact, this and many more such complaints indicate that the customer service of cellular operators leaves a lot to be desired. Ms Shoba Iyer, Consumer Action Group (CAG), believes that the customer service of operators is pathetic. “We get complaints related to poor network availability, delay in billing, etc., against all mobile operators. What’s important here is that CAG is often the last resort of the subscribers who have been at the receiving end of poor customer service. The problem is either you can’t get through to the customer care in-charge since the telephone line is constantly engaged, or when you do get through you have to put up with customer service staff who are ill-informed, inefficient and discourteous,” she adds.

According to Ms Iyer, CAG has received maximum number of complaints against Reliance Infocomm. “We have received close to six complaints against Reliance, most of which is related to billing problems. Reliance subscribers complained that they had not received their bills for more than three months and in some case subscribers received bills even when they had stopped using the service. However, we have not had any luck with Reliance. The Reliance Webworld people have a nonchalant and callous attitude which is quite irritating. What’s worse is that each time I contact the customer care a different person speaks to me forcing me to repeat my complaint at least a dozen times. I have given up hope,” she adds.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority Of India (Trai) report on the Quality of Service (QoS) of mobile operators for the quarter Oct-Dec, 2003 says that the “percentage of billing complaints resolved within four weeks by mobile operators has shown deterioration”.

This might be because under the current system, the customer care operator only records written complaints related to billing.

What do the providers in question have to say about this? Mr Somashekar, head, Reliance, (TN & Kerala circle) said: “This is completely incorrect. We have customer care executives actively available in our WebWorlds. Besides this, our contact centre is adequately staffed and equipped to handle any customer grievances”.

He adds, “Reliance is India’s largest mobile service provider, so naturally we receive the maximum complaints. I agree that initially there were some incidents of bills not reaching the customer due to wrong addresses, etc. But these have been rectified to a great extent now. We have since tightened all our back-end processes to ensure zero error at data collection and entry level as well as at front desk levels to ensure proper address verification before a subscriber is added to the network. We have also since taken and continue to take several measures that will enhance customer satisfaction”.

Mr Brahmadathan, chief general manager, BSNL, accepts that BSNL’s customer service did have some shortcomings.

“Earlier, information on BSNL’s service was not reaching our customers which is why we commissioned the 24X7 call centre, Sangamam, to give information on new connections, shifts, faults, billing problems etc,” he said.

When contacted, RPG declined to comment saying that AirCell which has bought out RPG is yet to appoint a company spokesperson.

Ms Sumathi Gurumurthy, head, customer care, AirTel, (TN and Kerala) denies there is any problem with AirTel’s customer service.

“Our customer care centre is quite responsive. In fact, our abandoned call rate is less than two per cent. We try to close complaints on the phone or resolve them within 24 hours,” she says.

This may be so but the mobile service providers who spend millions on their ad campaigns, don’t seem to invest in training their customer care staff.