Friday, November 11, 2011

Struggles of a dislocated Delhite..!!

Ever since moving into Bangalore, all I hit are road blocks, all I get are newer challenges. First it was finding a place to stay, followed by the struggle to find a flat to move into to finding the right companion to share the apartment with..!! If all this wasn’t enough, I had to get all the connections like gas, Internet and cable and list seems like growing with each passing day!!
I found a companion, a rather cool companion in Peony. We soon found a flat to stay in as well. She had a gas connection already in her name. I guess all these things that came free with her were the real things that made me happier ever since I moved into the flat..!! [:P] okkk.. I guess it was a little mean and selfish, but it was really the cherry on the cake... [;)]

We restored the cable connection people staying before us had. So it seemed going would get easier now. But the only connection that was to be set up from scratch, internet, really turned out to be the real painful experience in our lives.

We tried to restore the Airtel Internet connection she had. We felt just giving the reinstallation charges for the new address would end our plight. I have noticed one thing here; Customer care sucks in Airtel... I even feel tempted to generalise it for Bangalore as a whole though... [: P]

The connection was somehow restored after thousands of calls, threatening to drop bomb at their office by peony and the almost forceful detention of the workers coming to reinstall connection at the new address we have now.

 I wonder if we could have been arrested that night for detaining those workers. Had they logged a complaint with the local police, we might have ended in jail. We might have escaped the fate as Peo has an influential uncle. But still the thought amuses me, in jail for harassing and detaining the Airtel field workers..!! Wowwww this feels like some real psycho perverts or crazy women harassing 2 men in those lands where women feel vulnerable all the time. We could have been reorganised for our act of defiance by some NGO or women’s organisation for making women feel real powerful. All this is still hypothetical as nothing went like the way it shaped in my head..!! [:P]

The internet connection was however not stable and the laptops would disconnect from the net way too often. After many unsuccessful attempts to get someone from Airtel to resolve the issue, we decided to end our association with Airtel. Though I still wonder if no one showing any interest in coming over to have a look at the real cause of the problem we faced had anything to do with the incident of Peo forcibly holding the workers to complete all tasks before they call it EOD. Probably no one wanted to be detained in our house... [:?]

We then took internet connection from a local company named Hathway. It was a 5 MBPS unlimited plan but nothing about this plan was so called unlimited... How? Well simply because we had limits. [Have already written over this, though in a very different tone] Again after numerous unattended calls to their customer care centre, I wrote a mail to the customer support to get some explanation around the 128kbps speed we had to deal with though we took a 5Mbps plan [some real shit policy at work]. The customer care executive just knew one line, no matter what you asked him, he just retorted “company policy”... I wonder if he would say “company policy” even if we asked him the reason for being such a dumb ass...

Anyways, we were back to where we started from, no internet connection despite trying our level best to get a plan that suits our needs. I miss Delhi for the competitive nature of any service. I loved the “Customer is God” and “too good to believe” offers that were the notion of life in Delhi. But Bangalore makes “Gods feel like Beggars”..!! Here God has to take up whatever is being thrown to him… Oh! Delhi made you feel so powerful and even the middle class felt a little more valued there... I am so much more in love with Delhi now..!!

Well like a lost puppy who just got the scent of his master, we went running back to Airtel. The old connection that was disconnected was restored after a “Fuck you” and “you people don’t care” by my famous Peo. While restoring the connection we came to know the reason for the problems we were facing with Airtel in our first innings. The modem was faulty. I wish if someone came and checked it then when we were raising tickets for it, we might have saved going through the Hathway pain..!!! [L]

Anyways, what’s done is done.. We still have some concerns which are yet to be addressed. Our plan is still in the test phase and I wonder if this plan can serve us best. The previous plan she had isn’t available anymore and we are still left with wondering about the unlimited plans with thousands of limits.. These lies, these marketing strategies, I am tired of them all.. All I need is a good internet speed and a reasonable download spectrum..!!

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