Staying connected had become increasingly hard and I felt a pang when I realised that I had to end it. It’s only to be expected, I suppose when you have spent nearly two decades together. But the writing was on the wall – things work well until they don’t. If loyalty is one-sided, you have got to exit. Last week I ended my long association with one of India’s earliest and second-largest private telecom providers; I didn’t come to this decision easily and could not have ‘imagined the reason’, to flip a tagline.
Instead of connecting me with people, it disconnected from the beginning of May. I complained almost every other day, and a technician would visit. The broadband would work for half an hour or half a day before going on the blink again. It was like dating someone who’s breadcrumbing you. But what we expect from broadband is stability and commitment. It is a lifeline these days that’s needed for both work and play, and there’s only that much hot-spotting one can do.
Customer care operators refused to connect me to a senior person to escalate the matter and I resorted to tagging the company’s social media handles and emails. I got apologetic
replies none of which were useful as the technicians on the ground appeared clueless. They were a tag team of three who never seemed to inform each other of what they supposedly fixed in my place and didn’t have an SOP for a log. They would drop in as if they were making a courtesy call and depart after telling me to call them directly if the problem recurred.
When I vented about this issue, friends gave me advice; one of them asked why my son was not dealing with it. I wasn’t sure if it was an ageist or sexist remark, though it was well-intentioned, I am sure. In the brief time he was home, the son did weigh in to caution me to always call the company’s call centre and not the technicians directly as that would show that the problem was still unresolved. Rather peculiarly, one of the technicians goaded me to disconnect my broadband connection. He was a bit belligerent about it too. I complained about it and was aghast when the company sent the same person again after a week. His behaviour suddenly made sense – it would be easier to get rid of a problematic customer rather than to solve the problem! This time I agreed to discontinue the service.
It was not a quick goodbye however and the call centre reactions ranged from utter disbelief, “You want to leave us? Why do you want to leave us?” to importunate ‘Please give us another chance, we will prioritise you”, to admonitions “You will lose all your benefits – we won’t respond to your call in 60 seconds, you will no longer be a privileged customer”. My reactions ranged from sarcasm “Oh you can’t understand why after six weeks of being without your broadband I want to cut it?” to outrage “Why was I not a priority all this while?” to practically begging them to let me go. It would have cracked you up to hear our exchanges.
While all this was happening, my son bought a dongle and offered it to me much like giving a pacifier to a fussy baby. He also tried to set me up with another service provider. He paid a deposit online and waited and waited. After two weeks of pleading and being ghosted by the company, I resorted to the good old-fashioned tactic of ‘phone-a-friend’ and called a buddy who holds a senior position in the company. Within a mere two hours, a fibre connection was in place and a set-top box was good to go.
Perhaps the most shocking discovery in this broadband saga is that private companies have become worse than government departments. It’s appalling that we have to use ‘influence’
akin to the days when telecom was the government’s fiefdom. If a government agency fails to provide service, it will be publicly pilloried and vilified. Private telecom companies are impervious to criticism and don’t give a damn about the customer. I could perhaps complain to the Ombudsman or the consumer court but honestly, I am tired of it all and just want to Netflix and chill, and you can read this any which way. I am thankful that I had the ‘right connection’ and look forward to smoother surfing and working. Fingers crossed.
Sandhya Mendonca is an author and host of ‘Spotlight with Sandhya’ podcast.