Are the current Airtel plans already doubled or will double in JUNE?

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normally it won't atleast in india

i normally don't do it but many companies force you too,for example:

i had a hathway connection for 6 months subscription in advance unlimited connection(Rs.6000),in the last month wasn't able to surf my internet for 28 out of 30 days
so the HATHWAT BILLING HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OFFICER told me i can acces their internet for free for the next one month

i did and that too had connection cuts.after that month i get a bill of Rs.4000 of which Rs.800 is for subscription and Rs.3800 for usage.

i called them and told them that this bill is wrong,they said because you 6months had expired they transferred my account to an Rs.800 per month(for connection) plus charge per MB download(Rs. 3800) for my usage and told me that they wouldn't start the connection if i din't pay so i dumped them.

That sounds like an unfortunate mishap with Hathway. There's an old saying which is "Verbal contracts are not worth the paper they're written on".

Next time, if someone tells you something like that on the phone, ask for it in writing or ask if you can record the conversation and make sure a ticket is raised against your account with this as the resolution - otherwise it's your word against theirs.
 
If you already know everything, why ask? You can't end an argument by telling someone to shut up. Judging by the reaction of at least 2 people in this thread, being abrasive doesn't work for anyway. A more appropriate response would be "Thank you, that confirms the answers to my questions". Small life lesson: treat people as you would like to be treated.

wtf are you talking about?i already knew wat you were trying to tell me,i wanted to nkow from an AIRTEL customer.you jjust take it as offensive

just because 2 other didn't like it doesn't mean it was correct to pounce on me.they didn't understand what i tried to say and just started blasting me

I won't say anything about that first sentence except that surely I've shown that I at least know something about some parts of the ISP business in India and in several countries on several continents, and having utilized services in many countries too as a retail customer. I think the only major ISP I haven't used in Mumbai is Sify and a couple of Reliance and Tata products.

What I'm wondering is, why would you think I don't have experience as an Airtel retail customer? I'm from Mumbai, I have experienced Airtel's retail services for both Broadband and Mobile, but without knowing what suburb you live in it's hard to say what kind of service you get.

As I also suggested to you, since the service can be of different quality in different parts of the city, and indeed, the country, why not ask your neighbours who may have Airtel connections how they are finding the quality of service? They at least would be able to give you a realistic answer.

You know about the services and i agree,was just replying to the guy who was saying you are GOD and know everything around the world

even i have experienced AIRTEL mobile.the thing was that i wanted to know who is currently using their broadband connection.i have heard alot of times that AIRTEL was good at first but their services went down the drain after they got alot of customers

are you currently using AIRTEL and if then in which area?

i know that service can change from district to district but atleast i would get an idea about their polices.




Not paying the bill will get you in trouble.

OT: That's just one more reason we're sticking to a prepaid model, then at least we can show that the bandwidth has been utilized in the case of a refund demand (especially in the case of data plans).

We want to be fair to the customer and provide an exceptionally high quality of service, but at the same time we don't want people like you ripping us off, as apparently your intention may be.

If there is a genuine problem with the service (slow-speeds etc) then it is our responsibility to rectify it but we do have to be notified, in case our 24x7 monitoring fails to notice a problem, and if the service quality is proven to be consistantly bad then we surely would owe you a refund or some kind of compensation like a month of free service.

i wouldn't rip you off if you give me good service but only if you rip me off so then i will rip you off

and if not paying bills will get me in trouble then why not make your plans postpaid,you will get the money either way.

and most of the time in telecom sectors the refunds don't happen.as if a customer facing a problem one midnight can't prove to you the problem was there the next day when he lodges a complaint,the refund process is ****edup in the telecom sector specially in the broadband sector

---------- Post added at 09:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 PM ----------

That sounds like an unfortunate mishap with Hathway. There's an old saying which is "Verbal contracts are not worth the paper they're written on".

Next time, if someone tells you something like that on the phone, ask for it in writing or ask if you can record the conversation and make sure a ticket is raised against your account with this as the resolution - otherwise it's your word against theirs.

i had it written on my subscription receipt and stamped by their offices.but they said they didn't have anything like this so i left them

same with NIVYAH who are prepaid,blocked their check
 
wtf are you talking about?i already knew wat you were trying to tell me,i wanted to nkow from an AIRTEL customer.you jjust take it as offensive

just because 2 other didn't like it doesn't mean it was correct to pounce on me.they didn't understand what i tried to say and just started blasting me


You know about the services and i agree,was just replying to the guy who was saying you are GOD and know everything around the world


Perhaps he went a bit far, and on his behalf I humbly apologize to you.

even i have experienced AIRTEL mobile.the thing was that i wanted to know who is currently using their broadband connection.i have heard alot of times that AIRTEL was good at first but their services went down the drain after they got alot of customers

are you currently using AIRTEL and if then in which area?


If you read what I said properly, you'll notice I said I have experienced Airtel's retail services for both Broadband and Mobile.

As far as it's concerned now, firstly I'm out of the country at this exact moment and secondly when I get back I'm moving house anyway and will be having my own service installed. When I was using it in "South Mumbai", I can't say I had any real complaints.

i know that service can change from district to district but atleast i would get an idea about their polices.

i wouldn't rip you off if you give me good service but only if you rip me off so then i will rip you off


You'll need to be specific on the policies you want to know about. Surely when the tariffs for the Mumbai circle say "30GB then your speed goes down to 1Mbit/s", then this is what will happen, no? Are you expecting special treatment from them or something? Please clarify.

and if not paying bills will get me in trouble then why not make your plans postpaid,you will get the money either way.


Because hiring lawyers and collection agencies is expensive for us and more expensive for you. We'd rather not have to drag you through court and whatnot, it's bad for PR and worse for you. Clearing up faulty credit records (even when the mark on your credit record should never have happened) in the first world takes years - hate to think how many decades it would take in India.

I'm a business person with a heavy technical background - I do what makes sense for us technically and financially, frankly I'd rather we concentrate on the business, rather than ruining some poor customers life because he didn't pay his bill: but at the same time, it can't be such that immediately refunds are issued, otherwise then the situation arises where some customers take the service for 1 month or whatever, finish downloading all their torrents then say "oh no, we don't like the service".

and most of the time in telecom sectors the refunds don't happen.as if a customer facing a problem one midnight can't prove to you the problem was there the next day when he lodges a complaint,the refund process is ****edup in the telecom sector specially in the broadband sector

For a short interruption in service, this is allowed for any provider, unless you have an SLA that says otherwise - and on a consumer connection, you won't get an SLA. You'll be lucky to get an agreement that gives you guaranteed 99.5% uptime in India - that's around 3.5 hours a month.

If there is a problem in the middle of the night, who's to say that it wasn't some kind of scheduled maintenance? 2-6am is an hour whereby an interruption of service would cause minimal effects to most customers.

---------- Post added at 10:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:56 PM ----------

i had it written on my subscription receipt and stamped by their offices.but they said they didn't have anything like this so i left them

same with NIVYAH who are prepaid,blocked their check

If it's written, signed and stamped, then I would agree that Hathway are in the wrong. They also should not change your account type without notice - that they did is just weird to me. In my experiences with Hathway, they simply stop the connection if you don't renew it.

As for Nivyah, well... yeah. I'll choose not to say anything about Nivyah. Speaking of which, I was amazed to see a Nivyah IP downloading from me a couple of weeks ago. First time I've ever spotted a Nivyah customer "in the wild".

I guess that's why payments by cheque would need to be cleared before the service was activated or continued: receipt alone wouldn't be enough, so cheque payments should probably need to be paid by the 20th for service to remain uninterrupted on the 1st of the month, and cash and other payments (Kiosk, Debit Card etc) would be able to be done up until about 23:55 on the last day of the month. Charge-backs would probably result in account suspension.
 
If you read what I said properly, you'll notice I said I have experienced Airtel's retail services for both Broadband and Mobile.

As far as it's concerned now, firstly I'm out of the country at this exact moment and secondly when I get back I'm moving house anyway and will be having my own service installed. When I was using it in "South Mumbai", I can't say I had any real complaints.

I knew thats why i told you to stop replying,it was ok once but to reply 5 times was not what i wanted



You'll need to be specific on the policies you want to know about. Surely when the tariffs for the Mumbai circle say "30GB then your speed goes down to 1Mbit/s", then this is what will happen, no? Are you expecting special treatment from them or something? Please clarify.

just that their upload,Fair Usage Policy and other things.i have asked some user they say they exist some don't same with the sales exec and engineers of AIRTEL

and please don't again tell me that it was good when you had it.ISP's quality change alot in little time.



Because hiring lawyers and collection agencies is expensive for us and more expensive for you. We'd rather not have to drag you through court and whatnot, it's bad for PR and worse for you. Clearing up faulty credit records (even when the mark on your credit record should never have happened) in the first world takes years - hate to think how many decades it would take in India.

it really wouldn't be that bad for us as many bigger companies like TATA,AIRTEL,RELIANCE can't take money out of their customers,it would be even difficult for you and to make every user do it is almost impossible

and INDIA is far away from first world so keep that out

I'm a business person with a heavy technical background - I do what makes sense for us technically and financially, frankly I'd rather we concentrate on the business, rather than ruining some poor customers life because he didn't pay his bill: but at the same time, it can't be such that immediately refunds are issued, otherwise then the situation arises where some customers take the service for 1 month or whatever, finish downloading all their torrents then say "oh no, we don't like the service".

hey i didn't say that you will do what other bad ISP's do but people just can't trust just by your saying.i was speaking in general

if the customers wants to leave you subscribership after one month after paying the installation charge and that months bill,he is totally entitled to and there is nothing wrong in that.most won't cause they wouldn't want to pay for installation charges for another company again and again



For a short interruption in service, this is allowed for any provider, unless you have an SLA that says otherwise - and on a consumer connection, you won't get an SLA. You'll be lucky to get an agreement that gives you guaranteed 99.5% uptime in India - that's around 3.5 hours a month.

If there is a problem in the middle of the night, who's to say that it wasn't some kind of scheduled maintenance? 2-6am is an hour whereby an interruption of service would cause minimal effects to most customers.

not just talking about what i said,was just explaining wat can happen

if i take your service and get 7-10 days interruption and complain about it and for some reason the problem isn't solved as it happens many time,you will keep taking complaints and saying it will be resolved

after it gets resolved and if the consumers wants those days for free next month and you don't provide it saying that it happens,what will the consumer do.your engineers can easily change the stats and as it is today consmer courts have stopped taking internet service complaints so the consumer has a loss

then if consumers wants to continue he will pay or will not pay if he thinks he is cheated if it were postpaid but if it were pre-paid then he loses money of that month and has to spend further when he chooses a new company

you are saying you will refund but so have all others and if 10000 of your customers get this problem,you won't refund for all of them.where will you pay your employees then from
 
just that their upload,Fair Usage Policy and other things.i have asked some user they say they exist some don't same with the sales exec and engineers of AIRTEL

and please don't again tell me that it was good when you had it.ISP's quality change alot in little time.


Always take a CSR's word with a grain of salt, and it was fine when I had it. I don't know what it's like now and I don't know in which area you reside so I can't even check with anyone I know to try and actually help you answer the question to your satisfaction.

it really wouldn't be that bad for us as many bigger companies like TATA,AIRTEL,RELIANCE can't take money out of their customers,it would be even difficult for you and to make every user do it is almost impossible

and INDIA is far away from first world so keep that out


Again, please read what I'm saying more carefully instead of launching straight in to argument mode. I said "I'd hate to think how long it would take in India" for a reason.

hey i didn't say that you will do what other bad ISP's do but people just can't trust just by your saying.i was speaking in general

if the customers wants to leave you subscribership after one month after paying the installation charge and that months bill,he is totally entitled to and there is nothing wrong in that.most won't cause they wouldn't want to pay for installation charges for another company again and again


Actually, we would have every right to have a minimum contract term of 6 or 12 months on our service, considering all the equipment and wiring we're putting in to each building - it costs us over Rs45,000 per user for the first year because of the equipment costs - and that's assuming we get about 50 customers in the same area (even though each area we can support up to about 350 customers on one cable).

Fiber cables are about 5x more expensive than copper cables per meter, but we think that at the end of the day, the speed and quality of the service will be well worth it.

if i take your service and get 7-10 days interruption and complain about it and for some reason the problem isn't solved as it happens many time,you will keep taking complaints and saying it will be resolved


I completely agree that 7-10 days interruption is unacceptable. If it happened with our service, I'd be reprimanding my engineers for not fixing the problem.

after it gets resolved and if the consumers wants those days for free next month and you don't provide it saying that it happens,what will the consumer do.your engineers can easily change the stats and as it is today consmer courts have stopped taking internet service complaints so the consumer has a loss


If such a thing happened, yes, you would be eligible for compensation, such as a free month of service. And engineers can't just change the stats, and even if they could, for the sake of Rs2,000 or so, I'd hope that they value their jobs more than that.

Plus there would be the statistics from your router which would also show how much you've utilized and are completely independent from our accounting - I suppose we can change that too?

then if consumers wants to continue he will pay or will not pay if he thinks he is cheated if it were postpaid but if it were pre-paid then he loses money of that month and has to spend further when he chooses a new company

you are saying you will refund but so have all others and if 10000 of your customers get this problem,you won't refund for all of them.where will you pay your employees then from

Why would the customer lose money? If the customer is entitled to a refund under the terms of his contract, then he is entitled to a refund. If the service is down for a few hours a month, this would not entitle anything, but if it's down for days at a time as you appear to have experienced with Hathway, then the customer would be entitled for sure.

If the customer is only getting 4Mbit/s on his torrents instead of his promised 5Mbit/s for some reason, this is unlikely to be eligible. If the customer is only getting 1Mbit/s on his promised 5Mbit/s, then this would probably be eligible and a cause for concern on our part.

Basically, if we have to refund because the service is not up to scratch, then that's what we have to do, but it's only going to happen after the case is properly investigated. We envisage though that even this should be highly unlikely to be necessary.

In the unlikely event that we have to refund 10,000 customers, then I'd very much hope that it's for reasons beyond our control, such as a major catastrophe, which is what insurance is for.

Otherwise, every single international cable from India would probably be broken, in which case, we'd be compensated by our suppliers so that we could compensate the customers - with our suppliers, we *do* have SLAs which guarantee our uptime, but we also have several routes to mitigate the possibilities of that sort of thing happening.
 
what kind of an SLA your customers get? :)

Consumers never get absolute SLA's, but I think we can reasonably suggest an uptime of at least 99.5%. If they want SLA's they need Corporate or MNC connections.

Even BT says "Occasionally we may have to interrupt your service. If we do, we'll restore it as quickly as we can".
BT.com | Personal | Terms & Conditions

---------- Post added at 11:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 PM ----------

you two should get a room

:D
 
Always take a CSR's word with a grain of salt, and it was fine when I had it. I don't know what it's like now and I don't know in which area you reside so I can't even check with anyone I know to try and actually help you answer the question to your satisfaction..

Lower Parel

Actually, we would have every right to have a minimum contract term of 6 or 12 months on our service, considering all the equipment and wiring we're putting in to each building - it costs us over Rs45,000 per user for the first year because of the equipment costs - and that's assuming we get about 50 customers in the same area (even though each area we can support up to about 350 customers on one cable).

Fiber cables are about 5x more expensive than copper cables per meter, but we think that at the end of the day, the speed and quality of the service will be well worth it..

only if your contract says that

i was talking in general,current operators like AIRTEL,TATA with phone lines and copper wires have it cheap

I completely agree that 7-10 days interruption is unacceptable. If it happened with our service, I'd be reprimanding my engineers for not fixing the problem.



If such a thing happened, yes, you would be eligible for compensation, such as a free month of service. And engineers can't just change the stats, and even if they could, for the sake of Rs2,000 or so, I'd hope that they value their jobs more than that.

Plus there would be the statistics from your router which would also show how much you've utilized and are completely independent from our accounting - I suppose we can change that too?

being eligible for compensation and giving compensation is a different thing.Most don't do it and it is difficult to trust on this

your engineer can change stats and can keep the job if their owner tells them to,not targeting anybody here too.

many companies provide internet without routers and even if they do have a router many things can happen

like customer care often before taking a complaint tell the consumer to reset your router,that can erase the info.alot of other things can also happen

and as you said your engineers will not do such a thing for Rs.2000,same way a consumer doesn't go to court normally for just a months service and changes for lawyers heavy fee and the tension and other problems it has.he just changes to a different service but the consumer still loses money that he didn't get the service worth

Why would the customer lose money? If the customer is entitled to a refund under the terms of his contract, then he is entitled to a refund. If the service is down for a few hours a month, this would not entitle anything, but if it's down for days at a time as you appear to have experienced with Hathway, then the customer would be entitled for sure.

If the customer is only getting 4Mbit/s on his torrents instead of his promised 5Mbit/s for some reason, this is unlikely to be eligible. If the customer is only getting 1Mbit/s on his promised 5Mbit/s, then this would probably be eligible and a cause for concern on our part.

Basically, if we have to refund because the service is not up to scratch, then that's what we have to do, but it's only going to happen after the case is properly investigated. We envisage though that even this should be highly unlikely to be necessary.

In the unlikely event that we have to refund 10,000 customers, then I'd very much hope that it's for reasons beyond our control, such as a major catastrophe, which is what insurance is for.

Otherwise, every single international cable from India would probably be broken, in which case, we'd be compensated by our suppliers so that we could compensate the customers - with our suppliers, we *do* have SLAs which guarantee our uptime, but we also have several routes to mitigate the possibilities of that sort of thing happening.

again,being eligible for compensation and giving compensation is a different thing.Most don't do it and it is difficult to trust on this

and this too,a consumer doesn't go to court normally for just a months service and changes for lawyers heavy fee and the tension and other problems it has.he just changes to a different service but the consumer still loses money that he didn't get the service worth

"If the customer is only getting 4Mbit/s on his torrents instead of his promised 5Mbit/s for some reason"- if its for some time then its ok but not for the whole month atleast on a connection with fixed contention ratio

"
Basically, if we have to refund because the service is not up to scratch, then that's what we have to do, but it's only going to happen after the case is properly investigated"-normally this only happens,it either takes alot of time or takes as little time to say our service was up at all times.there is almost no way to know or prove from the consumer side that the service wasn't there cause that time has passed and now the service has been made available
 
Lower Parel

I'll try and check with someone in that area.

being eligible for compensation and giving compensation is a different thing.Most don't do it and it is difficult to trust on this

your engineer can change stats and can keep the job if their owner tells them to,not targeting anybody here too.


There would only be 2-3 people allowed to log in to the accounting routers, placed at the border of our network, one of them being myself. I'm pretty sure an engineer could not change the stats.

many companies provide internet without routers and even if they do have a router many things can happen


I'll take your word for it, but as it's required for us to provide routers, you can be fairly sure that if anything, your router will show a higher traffic level than our accounting routers (due to the whole internal transfer thing). If your router shows less traffic, then I'd say we'd be firing someone and compensating you somehow.

like customer care often before taking a complaint tell the consumer to reset your router,that can erase the info.alot of other things can also happen


With ours, a hard reset might perhaps (by that I mean, the factory default settings button), but turning it on and off, no.

and as you said your engineers will not do such a thing for Rs.2000,same way a consumer doesn't go to court normally for just a months service and changes for lawyers heavy fee and the tension and other problems it has.he just changes to a different service but the consumer still loses money that he didn't get the service worth


I'll take your word for it. Like I said, if the service is consistantly bad and there are unresolved support tickets, then we'd have every reason to give a refund and avoid bothering the lawyers altogether.

again,being eligible for compensation and giving compensation is a different thing.Most don't do it and it is difficult to trust on this

and this too,a consumer doesn't go to court normally for just a months service and changes for lawyers heavy fee and the tension and other problems it has.he just changes to a different service but the consumer still loses money that he didn't get the service worth


If the consumer is proved right and we were not providing services up to the standards outlined in the contract, he would probably get a settlement and his lawyer expenses.

"If the customer is only getting 4Mbit/s on his torrents instead of his promised 5Mbit/s for some reason"- if its for some time then its ok but not for the whole month atleast on a connection with fixed contention ratio


There are people who would put up with far worse than 80%. Since contention ratio doesn't *really* apply, and even if it did, it's well within TRAI limits, it would be little more than a sign that it's time for us to upgrade *our* bandwidth to the rest of the world. Unlike many other ISPs, I would imagine it's unlikely to be a network or signal problem because of the whole FTTH thing.

Basically, if we have to refund because the service is not up to scratch, then that's what we have to do, but it's only going to happen after the case is properly investigated"-normally this only happens,it either takes alot of time or takes as little time to say our service was up at all times.there is almost no way to know or prove from the consumer side that the service wasn't there cause that time has passed and now the service has been made available

Our equipment allows us to do it on the fly. We could watch a traffic graph live and tell you how fast your bandwidth is being delivered and where there is a bottleneck between our office and you - if there is one.

Plus, you could always take a screenshot or a video, showing your download speed/traceroute result/ping result etc behaving slowly or being unavailable for certain lengths of time, and recording the CSR you speak to on the phone is also there. There are many ways you could collect evidence against a company to make a case.

As I said, if the service is constantly below par, it would be time for us to upgrade our bandwidth to the outside world - or possibly light up another cable to your area.

Of course, now I've managed to drag yet another thread very much offtopic for which I apologize. I'll try to find someone in Lower Parel who has Airtel.
 
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