Mobile woes: They activate ringtones, make us pay!

Everyone loves to hate their mobile service providers. On January 4, we carried A Ganesh Nadar's account of his cellphone connection going from bad to worse while on tour and asked readers to share similar experiences with us. Here, Sohaib Raza tells his story:

I had an Aircel connection in Jharkhand Circle and was using it for two years. I always stayed away from value-added services like dialer tunes, cricket alerts, jokes etc. One day my friend called me and the ringer sound was replaced by a song called 'Wadi-e-ishq Se Aaya Hai Mera Shehzaada' and Rs 30 was deducted from my cellphone account. Absolutely furious about the matter ,I took the complain to the local Aircel office, but they refused to accept that it was activated without my consent. However, on my repeatedly denying having activated it, they jotted down my complaint and promised me a remedy as soon as possible. But I wanted more than just the remedy, I demanded my Rs 30 be credited back to my account, to which they said they would try. After a week, I got a call from customer care saying that they could not credit the amount back to the account, but patting themselves on the back for having de-activated the caller tune facility.

Again after a week, the same stupid song was playing when someone called me and as usual I was charged Rs 30 for the second time in the same month. Extremely furious about the issue, I went again to the local office and this time they told me to contact Mr Jain, the customer care head of Bihar Jharkhand Circle. I did contact him and he assured me he would solve the matter in 24 hours. Seeing as it was left unresolved, I contacted Mr. Jain again and this time he plainly told me, "Mein kuchh nahin kar sakta, aapne khud activate kiya hain, paise wapas nahin milenge (I can't do anything, you've activated the service yourself and you won't get the money back).' I told him that if this was the case, then I had no option except to migrate to some other service provider, to which he solemnly replied, "Samundar se ek bucket paani nikaalne se samundar sookh nahin jaata (By taking a bucket of water out of the ocean, the ocean doesn't dry up)." In other words, he meant that one customer less from a customer base of millions hardly makes any difference.

Ultimately I got rid of the Aircel connection and embraced Tata Docomo. I can say that the latter is by far much better than the former.

Have you had a nasty cellphone service experience? Share your mobile woes with us. Write in to us at getahead@rediff.co.in (subject line: 'Mobile woes') and we'll feature your story, right here on rediff.com

And here is Delhi reader Dr Gaurav Aggarwal's account:

I have had a pretty bad experience with Vodafone.

I've been receiving unsolicited commercial calls (UCCs) on my cellphone for more than a year now.

I used to complain to Vodafone about the same in the past through e-mails as well as courier/ registered post. But the customer care has always been so unresponsive that they never reply to such mails. Also, there was no way of knowing whether the e-mail was received by them or not, since they did not have an automated system of reply up until now.

I continued to receive (and still do) UCCs at my mobile number. So I continued to send mails with details of these calls to Vodafone. I was finally told in a reply that if the customer has not reported the UCC within 15 days of the call, then they won't entertain the compaint. So I started sending mails to them within 15 days of the calls received by me. Now I do get an automated reply from the Vodafone server that my mail has been received, but Vodafone refuses to take any action regarding the same. Whenever I remind them about the complaint, they do not reply.

Vodafone is supporting telemarketers' use of such UCCs by not taking action on customer complaints. This has been happening for more than a year now. I have written to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recently regarding this matter and am awaiting their reply.