I have a land line connection at home. It is from BSNL, the state owned Telecom giant in India. I am too disgusted with their service and shot of the following email today to all publicly visible BSNL officers. Let us see whether email work in India.
The exact nature of the problem cannot be described in words , so calling customer care is useless. See the pictures below to have a general idea of problems with my BSNL land line. I live in a urban area. If the connection is like this in a city, the situation in villages will be much more pathetic.
To
Nodal Officer
Public Grievances
Kerala Circle BSNL
Sir,
I am an unfortunate customer of BSNL having the land line no. 0471-xxxxxx . This phone has never worked for 3 days at a stretch. The connection coming to my home is hanging on the poles and is within the reach of even small children. Every time a vehicle passes the cable breaks. There is no RJ 11 outlet inside the house. The connection to the instrument is given is the most unprofessional manner.
I have booked umpteen number of complaints . Each time they come and cut the overhanging cable and fixes it . In effect , if I want to make a call I have to go to the neighbour and file a complaint first.
Dejected and disgusted with the kind of service and the personnel dishing out the service, I am surrendering the phone. I know emails wont work in a government company like BSNL, so I am CCying the mail to all addresses that I can find right from your minister to the local exchange. So please excuse me if you have received this mail in mistake.
Also, I am writing an entry in my blog on the status of Consumer Satisfaction in BSNL. Please read it here. I have some interesting pictures too.
Thanking you for the services rendered so far.
Yours faithfully
Sunil T T
CC to gm_o_kerala@bsnl.co.in, MOCIT@nic.in, dgmpgkrl@bsnl.co.in, agmpgkrl@bsnl.co.in, cmdbsnl@bsnl.co.in
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Update : 4pm September 10 2009
There seem to be some one who is reading email in BSNL. I got the following e mail one hour back ( I am removing the persons name and phone no.)
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show details 1:56 PM (1 hour ago)
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Sir This is in acknowledgement to ur detailed mail and blog.Ur grievance has been registered in Circle PG cell vide KRL/CO/2009/14224 and a detailed report is avwaited after redressal.If you dont mistake kindly wait for surrendering ur telephone connection as your grievance has been borught to the notice of all concerned .The inconvenience caused is regretted. and we assure our best services always at our level.Tou can track the status of your grievance on line on website
–http://bsnl.in/pgstatus.htm or www.keralatelecom.co/grievances by feeding the above docket Number and first two letters of your name ie “su” .
XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX
Assistant General Manager (PG)
O/o CGMT, BSNL Kerala Circle, Thiruvananthapuram-33
Tel.: 0471-xxxxxxxxx, , [12727 (Toll free)]
Fax : 0471-xxxxxxx, Mobile: xxxxxxxxxx
email : agmpgkrl@bsnl.co.in
But wait, look at the web links they have forwarded.
http://www.keralatelecom.co/grievances
This gave me an address not found error. May be our assistant general manager has mistyped it. I also make mistakes. It seems they have know idea about the .in domain
I looked at the other URL and got the following screen.
Let us see how it turns out.
Update : 11 am 11 Sept. 2009
A line man from BSNL appeared today. He was looking violent. I had warned my wife and children about a possible attack from BSNL personnel.
He pulled down two leaves from my coconut tree . See the picture below. Tried to fix some joints.
Finally , he located the fault to one of the joints that I posted yesterday. The original joint was replaced with the joint give below. This is inside the house. I think , I have to take fire insurance for the house thanks to BSNL.
Oh! I forgot to mention , BSNL it self is providing insurance . See this . How thoughtful they are, expecting this kinds of hazards for the customers.
He then replaced the original phone with another. Now , the phone is working. But the overhanging wire and the open junction box remains the same. My phone works for now and possibly it will work till this evening .
I used to use dial up internet some time back. I plugged in my lap to the line and tried to access internet . As expected the data rate is some thing like 1bit/sec. The idiots manning the lines have no idea how I use the phone. For them , phone is just for making local calls. No wonder people are massively surrendering land lines. Hail reliance and Tata, at lease their personnel are user friendly.
I am sending the following email to BSNL so that my complaint is not closed prematurely.
To agmpgkrl@bsnl.co.in
Dear Madam,
They fixed the phone . I have posted some more pictures for your kind reference on my blog. Also, posting them to my twitter account and other activist group emails. I know your men will close the complaint immediately . I have got this kind of fix several times already . I want a permanent solution to the open DP and the wire joints.
Thanking you for the services rendered so far.
Yours faithfully
Sunil T T
Update: 14th September 2009
I got another email from CMD bsnl as below. This seems to be a routine reply.
We acknowledge receipt of your mail. The same has been forwarded to KERALA
Telecom circle / Telephones for necessary action with intimation to you.
With Kind Regards.
AGM (Cordn. – I)
CMD SECTT
Update :19 September 2009
Great going with BSNL. A lady claiming to be Sub Divisional engineer visited my home just now. She was accompanied by a few other staff looking sullen. I showed her the entire problem and told her that the cable is patched at several places and that I am unable to access dial up. She advised me to take BSNL broadband . I thanked her and told that enough is enough with BSNL. She was on the verge of argueing with me . I showed her the open junction box (DP) and told her that any kid can pull it out. She said that is none of my b
hope u not received any responces from BSNL, that the way India moving forward
Annai
If it works for you, gr8. My experience with e-mail-to-BSNL was a success(Senior-Level). Hope it may work for u as well. But even if your problem is solved, its just one in thousand. Where is justice for common man? I guess there is a way. ‘MOB-FURY’. Age of mob-fury is to come in kerala very soon. If one junior Engineer/SDE of BSNL is hit and if it has ample publicity, we are doing a service. We are setting an example. But be sure to do it in group(mob), not single. MOB-FURY, oh god send that age so soon. Let India move forward.
Dont be single, be part of a mob. Or create one in your locality.
@Suman
I don’t care bit about BSNL. Just go to the nearby shop and buy a new phone connection is so easy nowadays. Every one knows it and if you pay Rs 50 to the local line man, you are a fool.
Unfortunately the BSNL staff is still in 20th century India and they don’t understand this fact.
Please don’t torture the AGM. Even though they hold titles like General Manager, they cannot take any action against any staff who does such nonsense. They are helpless.
Annai,
Posting im malayalam for the sake of BSNL line staff as well
‘????????? ??????????? ?????????????????.. ??????? ?????????? ???????????? ??????????? ????????????????? ????? ????????-????. ???????????. ??????? ?????????????? ????????? ???????. ??????? ???????? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????. ??? ????????????????? ???? ?????????? ????????????? ???? ????????? ???????????. ???????????????? ???????? ???????? ???????????..’
Unicode ille?
open DP is still open. Is it?
Aliyo,
Veruthe enthina BSNL staffine veshamipikkunnathu?? You mentioned BSNL in 20th century,they are probably in 2nd century!.
Couple of years back I went to get a connection (broad band), the local AGM told me “capacityude prashnam undu, and it takes 6 month once the application is recieved”. I can understand that they wanted to verify details, and give a modem, but I did not realize they will have to make one starting with a PCB for me !! I love custom made stuff…
Anyway Best of Luck…
Hello sir,
I recently had a same experience. I had to get some money back from bsnl due to my plan change. I called their customer care(12678) and they said to contact the kottayam office . They also gave two numbers 2561616 and 2564033. When I tried the first number it said, the number is not existing and none answered the second call. Then I approached local bsnl office they said to contact in another number. But that too is unanswered. When I said to them that I registered at bsnl site, they said it will not do any good for you since they are getting thousands of complaints each day. 🙂 http://www.keralatelecom.com is down for days now. I also couldn’t find any web based section(which was there earlier) to register the complaints at bsnl kerala site http://kerala.bsnl.co.in/………. BSNL ROCKZ! :D…