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Follow UsBANGALORE, INDIA: Ranbir Kapoor 'the restaurateur' serves as a caricature of several telecom service providers offering services across the country, in the latest series of promotional campaigns by Tata DoCoMo.
Being a relatively new entrant, it is understandable that DoCoMo's campaign goes all out against older, and more established, competitors. Hidden charges, tariff plan agendas, unsolicited calls and the like are portrayed in an accusatory tone, singling out the rival brigade, for unethical business practices.
There is the old saying: When you point a finger at someone, remember there are three pointing back at you. Either DoCoMo doesn't subscribe to the thought or has conveniently forgotten to remember the adage.
'Black-out' blues
Last week, a batch of its numbers from the Karnataka circle faced network issues, some lasting for even more than three days, starting April 24.
As we decided to probe the matter further, it turned out that more than a few people faced similar issues, for varying periods. "I had issues with both calls and messages from April 25 to 27. There were a lot of problems in sending and receiving messages, which either were delayed or didn't reach at all. Calls originating from my phone as well as those made to my number, after a long delay dotted with beeps, got disconnected. Things got better on Friday," said Arpita Patel, a city-based projects manager, who is using DoCoMo 2G.
"The network quality had dropped alarmingly, calls took longer to get connected, messages never to be delivered and there was also sudden drop of voices on the other end," said another user, requesting anonymity.
Several others, especially 3G customers, also shared their harrowing experiences, of being 'marooned' by the network. "I faced complete black-out on April 24 and 25, with the network incidentally resuming after repeated enquiries on the second day. Later, I learnt that it was something do with a technical glitch, which the provider never intimated us about," lamented Uma Shankar from Bangalore.
Free of care
And this is not the first time there are complaints about the network coverage, among other issues — a major one to do with the 'devil-may-care' attitude of the customer care department.
Most of the complaints by users, including on several credible online fora, are about how they either don't receive proper answers or get diverted to some unidentified numbers, which leads them nowhere. A few blamed the provider's call centres of playing recorded messages, when they dialed in. Another grouse is that certain customer care numbers of DoCoMo are not to be reached from other service providers and, at times, from its own network.
More issues, less answers
As if all these are not enough, the GSM service by Tata Teleservices and NTT DoCoMo is also accused of attempting to block users from migrating to other networks through Mobile Number Portability (MNP). "When I sought the code to opt for MNP, so that I could switch to some other network, they didn't send me. I have heard about this from some of my friends, who were using DoCoMo," explained a customer from Mangalore.
"They are still pestering me about a pending dongle payment," said Shilpa B, a media professional, when she had actually given up the connection "long, long ago", after settling all the dues.
When we took it up with the service provider for more clarity on these issues, it preferred to be curt, but inadequate in its response, not answering all the queries:
"... this is to appraise (apprise) you that there was some regular maintenance activity carried out on both (April) 23rd and 24th only for 2 hours, and this is a regular industry practice that every operator follows."
A follow-up call didn't elicit any reply.
Perhaps, users' voices might be more audible.
Other DoCoMo users, who might have been hassled in any way, can share their experiences here. The floor is open for you out there!
(Names of users have been retained, with their due assent)