Trai Comes To The Aid Of Harried Phone Users

[@ksh@T 20]

Trai comes to the aid of harried phone users

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: Pained by having to deal with customer care people at your phone company? Frazzled at explaining to them the same problem over and over again with no result? Unable to rid yourself of your service provider despite repeated requests to terminate the service, because they keep raising new bills?

There’s some help on the way. At long last, Trai has written to phone companies to put in place systems to ease some of these problems.

Trai has released a set of draft directions that will be finalised after stakeholders send in their comments and suggestions to it by June 6.

To begin with, all phone firms will be required to assign a unique docket number for all calls made to the customer care helpline numbers and special numbers for registering complaints and convey it to the customer at the time of such call.

For those who have been trying unsuccessfully to shake-off their operators, there is good news. The draft directs telecom companies to disconnect the service within 24 hours of the receipt of a request, either through SMS, e-mail, fax and the like.

It is a common complaint that phone companies do not let customers go off their networks easily and continue to raise bills even after the request, saying they can’t terminate the service until bills are cleared — creating a vicious cycle.

To break that, Trai has called for adjusting the “security deposit against any pending bills or outstanding dues at the time of request for termination of service.”

Phones companies said they were studying the draft. But as initial reaction, a couple of companies said they were already following some parts of the direction. On certain other parts, they said it was difficult to follow and take a call on the subject.

As an example, one official said that it was not possible to treat SMS as the final written request for termination of service.

On whether e-mail was treated as a written request to terminate the connection, he said the company would need to check that out. Whatever be the debate, it seems that if Trai thrashes certain technical issues out, then life would be a lot easier for customers

[linuxguy 0]

AFAIK, Orange, Reliance both are following the same practice. They allow you to disconnect your connection at any time and they adjust your security deposit against your outstanding and then refund you. Infact, you can even tell Reliance in advance to adjust your last bills against your security deposit if you plan to leave their service. I have already done that as I plan to terminate my connection this july.