Reliance Infocomm is one of the largest CDMA providers in India. Their service is as pathetic as big a company Reliance is. Here I narrate my experience of the past 3 months. I have always HATEd CDMA for no good reason but this time I have a good reason the provider sucks and so does the technology.
The Reliance saga for us began when my brother lent us his extra Reliance conn when we didn't have a cell phone conn on our return. Though not very happy with their billing process and extra charges (that is given a fancy name of monthly commitment), we continued to use it for 2 months. One fine day V lost the cell phone. It probably fell in the basement and someone stole it. So we blocked the calls. Assured by Reliance that the handset was covered under insurance and that we could claim a new handset we went to get a new one. That is when we were told to file a FIR at the police station. One hidden clause after another came out as we dug deeper. The new handset came a t a price which costed more than buying a new one. So we finally decided to terminate the connection. Their customer service SUCKS..termination meant traveling 20 Kms to a remote office..so much connectivity for a mobile company. Well, we set aside this last Saturday for this chore.A few observations at the Reliance customer Service
a) No difference between a government office and a Reliance office
b) Negligence is synonymous to service and customer delight.
c) An average of 6 service terminations in 1 hour.
d) Yelling customers at every counter, billing blunders, documentation oversight .
I can't believe we actually paid 4000 to get the service terminated after a 2 hour wait at their goddamn office. When I thought it was all done, did they spring a surprise..if you don?t return the handset during termination one needs to furnish a proof of losing the handset which is a police complaint. And we were told that the complaint should mention the words pickpocketing and not lost or missing. So we went to the police station yesterday. Believe me this was one of the worst experiences of my life. That 1 hour at the police station made me feel like a criminal.
4:00 p.m. - V and I enter the police station. It is a plain concrete building comprising of ground floor and a floor above. A few rooms on the ground floor. Smells of phenyl all over. Gives a nauseating feeling. We are directed by the help desk lady (which is a big deal I guess in Indian Police Stations) to the first room to meet the sub inspector.
4:05 p.m. - the sub inspector asks (not interrogates) a few questions, reads the complaint and then decides it is not his case and directs us to the 3rd room on the right corridor.
4:10 p.m. We are asked to be seated in a wooden bench outside.
4:15 p.m. - All the administrative staff scan us from head to toe wondering why we are here. Some are kind enough to ask us the reason too. It was probably the most stupid thing I have ever done ? to be dressed in a jeans to a police station. There were no signs of V and I been married..Sigh..After the same set of questions, all of them have the same answer..wait right here.
4:20 p.m. - We hear sounds of beating followed by a shrill cry. A guy is being interrogated and beaten up with a stick by 2 police personnel. I can?t describe what went through me .I was cursing us to have been so reckless in losing the cellphone.
4:30 p.m. - the crying continues and minutes later the beaten up guy walks out the door still crying.
4:40 p.m. - we are summoned inside by the sub-inspector, crime in-charge. V and I enter and I'm rehearsing the story in my mind, anticipating the questions and making up my mind not to fumble. Yes it was a fabricated story as the complaint had to have pick pocketing. So I made up a story (hating myself for lying) that my phone was pick pocketed while traveling by BMTC bus the day before. On entering, we are asked to be seated. I'm asked what language can I speak. The next question is how is V related to me. Though I said we were married, they did not believe and it was obvious in their glances. Questions kept coming from 2 sub inspectors taking turns to find any loop holes in the story. The sub inspector decided it was my mistake to have kept the phone in the purse and he decided not to file the complaint. He said "I don't care". I wasn't sure if he wanted money and V didn't understand the language. I didn?t want to offer him money and get charged for corruption. Huh..I just stood up and walked out after being interrogated like a criminal.
4:50 p.m. We speak to the people outside and they are kind enough (in the literal sense) to direct us to Inspector # 1 and he tells us to file the complaint for missing/lost. He wouldn?t accept the same letter with the words pick pocket struck and rewritten us lost. So we gave a fresh letter to the finicky one and he signs it.
I can't tell you how glad I was to step put of the police station.It is indeed a dark world inside that the common man never gets to see!
Back to Reliance customer service center and we close the conn. What a good riddance! More yelling discontented, frustrated customers, more terminations, the story continues. My sincere advice. Do not go for Reliance connections in India. If you do, then read the clauses carefully before deciding. You cannot park your connection if you are traveling abroad as one can do with Airtel.
Reliance Woes
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Padma shri- Civilian Award
Padma Shri award stands 4th in the hierarchy of civilian awards after the Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan and Padma Bhushan. It is awarded by the Indian government every year in recognition of a person's distinguished service to the nation in their respective field. This year's list of awardees took me by surprise (and probably made me hopeful that even I could win it one day ?).Well just kidding....
One of the awardees of 2004 is Shahrukh Khan, a Hindi movie actor. Distinguished service in his field - cinema? I still cannot digest the fact that Shahrukh has been conferred with Padma Shri..sounds more like you and I can get nominated. Is success of commercial cinema been confused with distinguished service to the nation? Atleast his earlier movies more spontaneous than the current stereotype ones. Well, it is a disgrace to all the revered people who have been honored with this award in the earlier years :(
Zameen – We saw this movie on TV yesterday. What could have been a more appropriate movie on the eve of Republic Day! A very powerful performance by Ajay Devgan. One of those movies of Ajay’s where he talks less and his actions and sarcasm do the rest. This movie recounted the horrific incident of 1999 in which a Delhi bound flight from Kathmandu was hijacked and the hostages were released after 7 days. How we wish the Indian strategy then was the same as ...... Well, it brings back the same questions that linger in every I..n’s mind that I'd rather not talk about.....
According to this Nerd test, I’m a MID Level Nerd. My score was 72 and it totally freaked me out! Take this test and tell me what your score is.
Life rules and sucks in turns. It has been a roller coaster ride with moments, rather days of excitement, followed by periodic bouts of exhaustion and dejection. Monday through Wednesday was fun and then reality hit hard that the deadlines aren't far off. Which in turn means long working hours, tempers flaring blah blah blah....
Anyways so we had this gentleman from, lets say X place, visiting our workplace for a week. This was his first visit to India. It is interesting (and probably funny too in some circumstances) to observe how people react on their first visits. As most people, he was amazed to see how different transportation modes share the same road in Delhi - Agra, without getting in the way of each other. Some of them being buses, trucks, vans, motor bikes, bicycles, autorickshaws, carts pulled by horses or cows, pedestrians and finally cows and buffaloes themselves. He described his experiences at various places - some interesting, some amusing, some thought provoking. But it was good to listen to how an outsider perceives and how much of a culture change he/she experiences. He shared the pictures of autos, bus stops and some nice places too with his team back home. What was however annoying was to see some of the comments from his team, on the dark side of India such as our poor infrastructure and they were definitely not in good taste. So much for hospitality!
Weekend at Hogenekkal
Monday, January 17, 2005Hogenekkal falls is about 200 Kms from Bangalore. A few pictures from the weekend trip..
The main falls 
A cave like formation in the rock caused due to erosion over the years by running water 
View of the river from the top 
This boat made of straw ferries about 5 people along the river. when inverted it serves as a parasol too. 
Yahoo Desktop Search
Why can't Yahoo! for once be creative and not wait for Google to lead them in the Web Mail and Search game. The pattern of the past 10 months reveals that users can expect Yahoo! to introduce the same feature within 2 months of Google launching the feature.
Clean Desk
I'm aware that blogging about this could get me into trouble at work! Every time there is a customer visit, we are asked to clean our desks and keep our workspace tidy. It reminds me of the times at school when a Inspector visited and we were instructed by the teachers to come dressed in spotless uniforms and polished shoes. It was such a made up environment. I believe such practices are not alien to our workplaces either. Whatever happened to being normal .. Anyways I think "a clean desk is the sign of a cluttered mind" - no offense and with due respect to people with clean desks reading this post! What do you think ?
Pedestrian Crossing
Pedestrian (or zebra) crossing is virtually non-existent in Bangalore, India.
If the commutation time takes forever, crossing the road after disembarking from the bus just adds to the misery. Crossing the 80 ft wide road every evening on my way back from work is an adventure and I devise new ways to do it without getting hit, such as ---
1. The safest and most obvious one - WAIT, wait and wait until the traffic thins out.The longest I have waited is 20 mins.
2. Facing leftward looking at just the oncoming traffic. There are days when I get till the middle of the road and then hear continuous honking behind me and I don’t turn back ---just to avoid the fear of vehicles almost brushing………
3. Not look either ways but just right ahead and dash across the road.
4. However what I did this evening was quite different from the others..I was in a hurry to get back hom to receive a guest. After waiting for 5 mins, I noticed a huge gentleman also waiting to cross. He set out to cross and I stayed as close to him as possible (he was my shield) but I couldn’t keep up with his big steps and almost ran to get to the other end on time.
It is scary and I don’t know when I would come under the wheels of the blue bus that is symbolic to Yama (the god of death in Hindu mythology) approaching.
Tea
Monday, January 10, 2005Tea - One of my weaknesses (and as a consequence a bad habit too) is craving for good food and having large portions of it. I start my day with a cup of strong tea made with lil cream and a lot of sugar. My taste buds are averse to tea that doesn’t smell good. I must admit that the regular leaf tea available in India doesn’t taste great, so what we usually do is mix about 50 grams of 5 popular brands. It has been a while since I did this.
We had bought this box of Strawberry tea from Sri Lanka. I added a teaspoon of Mlesna flavored tea to boiling water, brewed it for 2-3 mins, added a dash of sugar to it and drank in peace – there’s something about it. Hmm..what can a better start to a Monday.
On a totally unrelated note, chk out this site www.wordcount.org
This was picked by Yahoo! as one of the favorite sites of 2004. Out of curiosity I searched for a few words to determine how they fared and here are the results :
Bush -2629
Diana -3876
India -2143
Bangalore - 47226
America -992
Ferrari -12531
Java-18892
Baleno – surprising performance
Thursday, January 06, 2005The only sound you should hear in a car is that of your pulse pounding.
The search for a car began 2 months back. For over 2 years now, V and I were sure that when we decide to buy a car, it would be none other than the Maruti Zen – a small family car that fit within one’s budget and navigated easily through the Bangalore traffic. However, when we began our search 2 months back, we entertained the idea of going for a ‘long’ car (the ones with a boot) – it may sound funny but until 6 years back there were very few long cars in India. So Zen didn’t figure in the list. The first choice was Esteem – the esteemed car in that segment for years now until Ford and Hyundai came in. Maruti Esteem supposedly had a sleek look compared to the Contessa – the one with a 50-50 front back).
We saw the Hyundai Accent GLE, Hyundai Santro, Hyundai Getz, Ford Ikon 1.3/ and 1.6, Fiat Petra, Honda City, Esteem Vxi and Baleno. With so many options and prices ranging from 4 Lakhs to 7 Lakhs, we decided to get our priorities right that would help in making the right choice. I wouldn’t go into the technical details that we considered. The elimination process began and Hyundai/Ford were out of our consideration radar mainly because of their looks. I have always disliked the looks of a Santro and surprisingly Ford Ikon didn’t appeal to both of us. The so called high ground clearance perhaps doesn’t make the car look so great. But I must admit that striking out Ford Ikon was perhaps the most difficult decision as it kept haunting us until the last. It is apparently a steal at that price. The 2 cars that I liked the minute I saw them were Honda City and Fiat Petra. Honda City was not affordable and Fiat Petra we felt as the autocar reviews said that it was a great value for money.
It was a daily ritual for V for the last 2-3 weeks. He would go down every morning and walk from one end of the basement to the other carefully observing the 90 odd cars parked – a great variety, There was one car that was a showstopper – the black Baleno and it captured his attention from the minute it rolled in on Sept 17th. The family that lives upstairs had bought it. A great offer on the Baleno that couldn’t have been more appropriately timed made us consider it. So the final showdown was between the Baleno and the Petra.
Until 2 weeks back, we had more or less decided on the Petra when an unfortunate incident happened with one of our neighbors and their bad experience with Fiat service center influenced our decision against the Petra. This again proved that Fiat doesn’t have a good market share because of its poor customer service in India, which we knew all along but wanted to intentionally overlook as we loved the Petra.
And Baleno won….
Today was the D-day. I was so nervous this morning that I felt like a kid appearing for a difficult exam. But it feels good that it has come home… And I came back home all excited like a kid waiting to play with the new toy..oh yes I don’t know how to drive so I just came back to see how it was…
Welcome home Baleno…
Violent Programming
The frustration levels at work soared today reaching a climax at 5:45 p.m. The culprit being JSF. The infamous term "Value change listener" got to our nerves that we started throwing bottles of water at each other. Huh..I'm giving up now and leaving for the day!
Six Apart to buy Live Journal - If this is true, then this could really change the blogging space. Time to wait and watch how Google responds with blogger!
Adieu 2004, Welcome 2005
Saturday Morning 7:30 a.m. I'm blogging! Last evening's New Year Party was quite different from what we have ever done on New Year's eve earlier. Last year we were at the Navy Pier to watch the fireworks in freezing cold. Thhis year it was watching kids' dance and sing ..though it felt more like a going to an annual day function at a school than a New Year party, it was fun.