Tata Indicom = horrible service

gautam

Tata indicom is not at all good.

We applied for a broadband internet connection. The 2nd day there executive was at our place to collect the payment. Since then we were chasing them for almost a month & a half. The issue was elevated to some senior people there. They said that the cables have not yet been laid in your area & such crap things.

Later we went to airtel, & they were quick.

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Noodle

Is there no way to stop such practises? We had the same problems initially. They take the money and then they say the cables have not been laid and there are problems with the cables and blablabla. I think it is or at least borders on malpratice, false pretences or some such thing.

Btw, for anyone who has a broadband connection from Tata I can only recommend to ask for a router instead of a modem. It works much better!

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gautam

These days they have launched wireless USB internet card.
One of my frnds have got the same. Its based on CDMA.

brownboy66

Hi Noodle. I sympathise with your problems - phone companies can drive you nuts. Just as an aside - the term "modem" these days is almost slang for any device on the end of a terrestrial broadband connection (as opposed to wifi, 2.5g, etc). Its a shortened version of modulation demodulation (i.e mo dem) which is what you had to do when connecting a old voice line (which is analogue) to a PC (which is digital - better known as dial up. Broadband is digital all the way - so technically speaking if you have a copper based broadband connection, it comes with a router - its just that most people call it a modem anyway. Sorry for the long winded explanation - but in a round about way your suggestion of changing the router is a great idea. Different brands can have a different effect. As mentioned before I have a MTNL broadband connection that came with a UT Starcom router. Its pretty hopeless and the most I could get speedwise was 243kbps. Threw it out, replaced it with an old Dlink router and hit 1meg the first time it fired up. Great suggestion on your part.

Noodle

Thanks brownboy! Sadly your explanations are lost on me - I'm no tech person at all. I only repeated how the technician called the devices: he said he is now changing the modem for a router. With the modem I had to click on the icon and then dial (although it was also called broadband), now with the router I'm already connected whenever I turn the computer on.

brownboy66

So it was the technician that called it a modem!http://www.indiamike.com/india/images/smilies/shock.gif
And you had to click on an icon to make it dial, but it was still called broadband! Ok - I'm beginning to understand your frustration with tata indicom.

Noodle

You didn't understand it before?

They are just horrible ....

brownboy66

So prior to coming to india I worked in Telecommunication for about 11 years. Have worked on high speed data networks, satellite, Internet....and mobile. Upon coming to India decided to get a cdma service as my wife needed a data card for her laptop - and cdma 1xrtt has the technical edge over GPRS (sorry - it just does). Tried Reliance but to be honest - they came across as completely disinterested - so went with Tata Indicomm instead.

The good part - phones and data card work well. The coverage is good and have had not problems using the data card while, say, travelling on the train, etc. Throughput is more than adequate for email and general browsing.

The bad part - service. So we had a robbery about 6 weeks back, but managed to get the phone back 2 weeks ago - and its still not working. What's the problem? A new sim card has been issued but its still not working on the phone. It will work in other phones but not on this one. Conclusions?

1) What has become apparently is that the people at the front desk have no idea what they are selling and how it works. This points to incredibly poor training of the sales staff (if they get any training at all).
2) Technical staff might be only slightly better understanding then the front desk staff.
3) In some cases their suggestions boarder on fraud. We asked for calls to the stolen phone to be diverted to another tata indicomm phone - the reply was that this could only be done via the hand set which......is a bare face lie! I know this as one company I worked for ran a CDMA network - and diverting a number in the network is simply a case of replacing the phone number associated with the ESN (electronic serial number)with the number you wish to divert to. Either the person suggesting this didn't know what had to be done - or was suggesting it to try and make us pay for calls twice (if you use call forwarding on the handset you pay for the incoming call - and the outgoing call to the number you have forwarded to).
4) Initially staff tried to say that a newly installed sim card was faulty (and that we would have to pay for another one as Tata is not liable for faulty sim cards that they supply). Then they tried to say the phone didn't need a sim card in the first place (it turned out they simply hadn't programmed the new sim card into their network).

so at this stage the phone is still not working so back to the tata indicomm office tomorrow. What is annoying is that having worked for a cdma operator in the past I know exactly what is involved in provisioning these services and what can be done. I've personally overseen changes to network configurations, phone upgrades, etc - where most minor changes are completed in less than 60 seconds. You can understand that front desk staff may be lacking in knowledge - but given the size of the company thats not really an excuse.

Nick-H

I don't recommend you buy a Tata car, either.

And, on the basis of all this, were I ever to find myself in the situation of managing a large project back in UK, I wouldn't employ Tata Consultancy.

Looking for steel? Might not have a choice; they seem to be cornering the world market in steel .

I hear that the Tata family is great at talking about customer satisfaction, and how every individual customer matters to them. Trouble is, I don't think they told their employees.

shashank.aggarwal

Tata Indicom is the worst service provided I have ever encountered...I would give Sify ltd a few points more but its not much better either...

I have had horrid experiences with Tata Indicom and few times to get the problems solved we simply used to call their call center and abuse them for 30 minutes in Indian Style...

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capt_mahajan

I mentioned this elsewhere, but when I wanted to disconnect my Tata Indicom landline about four years ago, they wanted to disconnect and take away the instrument first and return my deposit later. (just 1000 at that time).

Instead, I ran up bills worth about the thousand, and told them to return my deposit and take the instrument at the same time.

The phone instrument is still at home. I didn't remind them.

Companies in India are ready to sell. After sales and customer service is not expected, at least by this customer.

The trick is to make sure the default setting is in your favour.. so never have money with them.

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brownboy66

mmmmmmm.....airtel is looking better all the time!

Nick-H

Don't forget BSNL. Their help desk may be useless, but it is possible to get hold of a local engineer.

But, in general, Indian service providers still have a lot to learn, and Indian customers still have a long way to go before they demand more.

I'm having a fight with Panasonic over an AC at the moment!

rushie82

AC right now? I thought it is too cold here right now to turn on the fan. Or are u one of those ppl like me who buy things off-season to get discounts.

Nick-H

Can easily live without it; temperature around 30, although humidity makes it nice to use at night.

This is our living room ac. Kept tripping the circuit breaker. They came, and said it was an electrician's problem. The electrician came and said, nothing wrong with the wiring.

Between them, at one stage they had it feeding live current into the earth wire (I got a shock from the microwave, and yes, I know that means the house earthing is deficient) and have now left it with the polarity reversed, and apparently, according to my meagre understanding, using the 'earth' as neutral (it works if you disconnect the 'live' ). I have major doubts that it is safe to use.

Its a pigs ear, and I'm beginning to have strong sympathies for Prince Philip!