Sir, we can't register your complaint.

Indian telecom and Internet service providers are quite popular for their pathetic customer service. Mostly due to process issues between their customer center team and their engineering team where there is no mechanism for customer representative team to push their back-end teams to resolve issues or get a reverse feedback of an issue from the back-end team. But I was recently shocked when a reliance customer center executive told me that they can't register my complaint. Yes, you read it right he didn't register my complaint.

Here is how it started. I logged into to reliance website to pay Internet bill. I don't use any of reliance telecom product. And hate their website as much as their any other service. But have to log in every month once to just pay the bill for my wife. As a regular monthly ceremony, I initiated the payment from their website. Reliance telecom website uses billdesk for payment services. So, it directed me to bill desk site. After first level authentication of credit card number, name, expiry date and cvv code, it redirected me to my credit card website to enter my credit card password. After successful payment, I should be redirected to billdesk site and then automatic re-direction to reliance website for generating receipt. Instead I got an error which is from billdesk.

I had got text message from credit card company regarding usage of credit card and I was very confident that issue had happened between billdesk and reliance website. This means the amount have been debited from my credit card account.

Being a good appreciator of self service, once again I logged into reliance website to log a complain regarding this issue. I shuffled through their various categories and subcategories and couldn't find any relevant option to log this complain. I just decided to use one billing category, hoping that somebody will anyway look at complain. Surprisingly, they allow only 200 characters. Now, which complaint can be written in just 200 characters especially against Reliance service. Or they might have been influenced by twitter. If folks can raise their issues with Airtel_presence there, then why not here too. Nevertheless, cutting all possibles words that I could cut, I typed the complaint and click submit. As I should have expected, even logging complaint failed with an error.

I decided to call their customer center. Not that I like talking to them but I was left with no option. I patiently explained the issue to him. He suggested that I should call the bank. I once again attempted to explain that this is not really bank issue as issue happened after redirection back from bank. But he persevere as he might have been trained to. I am sure anybody who has talked to any of these telecom call center executive can imagine what I was going through. I actually tried third time. And when he repeated that I should talk to bank, I asked him if he can at least log a complain. And he repeated again that I should talk to bank first. Now, that was frustrating. I repeated – can you just log a complain? No sir, I can't do it – he replied. What, why – I exclaimed. Shocked me asked why can he log a ticket. He replied that he doesn't have option to log this ticket. Are you kidding – I seriously asked. I had a payment issue at your website and you can't log a ticket. And he was back to his perseverance that this is bank issue. I wasn't in for any further argument. I almost shouted - Can you just give me an email id or phone number where I can inform this issue. He was agitated too and gave me customer center email id.

I wrote a mail to this email id. Somebody called next day and informed that they have received the payment and replied the same on email. And now I wonder if something could be resolved on email, then why not the same could have been resolved through their ticketing system or call center. Indian telecom and ISP providers really need to work on their processes.  

Can you please give any wrong address?

I usually ignore phone calls selling credit cards, insurance etc.  But at times just enjoy talking to them. How? I tell a little lie about myself. It is quite interesting to how call rep behavior changes when they know I am earning much lesser than people whom they can offer credit card to. I have even pleaded for credit card on phone after that. Well, few of them do say nicely that they can't offer credit card to me but more often I have received abrupt phone disconnection or slamming phone. 

Now, since I am registered for DND, I haven't got such calls on my cellphone. But recently, I got a call on my office phone selling HDFC credit card to me. They told me some good things about card and I got tempted to have it since I hardly have any offers on my current card.  

I agreed to take this card. They sent a representative to collect required documents from me. I didn't need to do much on the form filling. When asked, the representative told me that I will get a phone call from somebody. They will talk to me and fill the form. Scary? Well, there is more then that. I get a call today. Lady asked me various questions over phone. Some questions I denied to answer. For example if I am graduate or post graduate, I denied to answer. Well, may be I should have checked her reaction by telling I am just high school. 

After various questions, she asked my permanent address as I stay in rented home. I told her I don't have one. She asked me if I can give my in laws address or any relative's address. I denied for that too. I told her she has my PAN number. Why they should need anything else to track me? She tried to ask me in fifteen different ways and I denied in one just statement that I don't have it. She assured me that there will not be any verification on this address. But I wasn't going to give on this too. She even said if I can give any address of my native location. Finally, she asked - "Sir, can you give any wrong address as I need to fill something in this form?"

I was no less than shocked with that question. I understand that company must have a good way to track defaulters. Having a record of permanent address makes chance of default little lesser.But it is shameful that one of their agent is ready to push their company in loss tomorrow to meet her numbers today. Company certainly doesn't have so much resource to validate everything. This shows how urgently we need a unique personal identification system in country. I hope Aadhaar (UIDIA) has all success.