Help available for telecom complaints

Now this post is for all of us who have been spending days complaining to telcos about our horrendous experiences & sufferings with them. The complaints we log at call centers of these telcos often go unnoticed, unheard, unrepaired & mostly uncared.

I’ve had similar problems with my telecom service providers. Without mentioning the name of the operator, I got my broadband connection disconnected in Feb’08 and even paid the dues without actually receiving the bill. It was no good deed but I had to ask for refund of my security deposit of Rs.3000. And thus began the ordeal. I had to call up customer service help lines several times and got the same reply- the process takes around 45 days, our exec will get in touch with you at the right time. I visited the nearest customer contact center and heard- we have no idea, contact helpline numbers.

I waited.
45 days later, I called up the helpline numbers and got a reply- “Sir, the process takes 45 days. As per our records your connection was terminated on 27th March. So you should wait till 15th May.” This made me furious but I had no choice. It was then that I got to know about Nodal Officers & Appellate Officers (more on these later). After that all I had to do was write a sweet mail to the customer service center about the issue with these words at the end- “Otherwise I will have to take this complaint to the Nodal department”. And voila! I got a reply in two hours, call in 4 hours & refund in 2 days.

And to my amazement the cheques that I received from the company bore this date- 27th March 2008. This simply means that the billing department had done a good work on their part i.e. made the refund cheques on the next billing date. But they would never have been delivered to me unless I made them run. That’s India. As we see in the hit comic show on TV- “Office Office”. We cannot do anything about it. No matter what brand you use, there will be some unscrupulous things happening within your visibility or beyond. Many times you just have to bear the brunt of this. I bore it in case of theft of my motorcycle with my insurance company.

But thankfully, TRAI is doing a good job by caring for the telecom subscribers. We keep getting news of what they do, sometimes for bill delivery, sometimes for transparency. But this step of Nodal & Appellate officers is a big leap. Here are the details:

• TRAI upon consultation with service providers had put in place the ‘Telecom Consumers Protection and Redressal of Grievances Regulations, 2007’
• It ensured efficient structural mechanism for consumer grievance redressal by putting a three step structure- call centers, nodal officers & appellate officers.
• If consumer is not satisfied by the response given by call center, he can take his complain to nodal officer. If nodal office response is not satisfactory, he can contact appellate officer & the case will be heard in 3 months.
• Contact details of these officers can be acquired from the respective company's website, call center, customer service center in your locality, etc.

Many of us are not aware of this & so we often do not do anything about an unpleasant experience apart from taking the case to consumer court or writing about it in some consumer forum. But now we have a solution… Apart from the above mentioned case, I was also able to solve a six month old problem of mine with a Cell phone connection I had taken by writing about it to the nodal officer. The case was resolved in three days. (I had spent more than Rs.200 on calling this company & its salesman prior to this step).

So next time you have a problem just note down your complaint number (ask for it if they don’t give) & fight till the end. You need to keep this complaint/ interaction no. to take the case to the nodal officer.

(I wrote this article to spread awareness about this telecom grievance redressal mechanism about which majority of us are unaware.)