I usually do not post comments as I never felt the need to. I have been an ardent reader of this forum and have been following posts, but never joined a conversation. However, off recently I had a bad experience with an WE Internet, which made me finally share my thoughts so that no one else faces this situation.
I wanted to get a
dedicated line over fiber optic cable that would give us a good
10Mbps of bandwidth. I happened to come across We Internet and found their prices comparatively lower than other providers, for a 10Mbps connection and over a fiber optic cable. It sounded attractive and we had several discussions before we finally chose to sign up with WE Internet. This is where it all started. I am in the service industry too and I expect the same high standards with which I treat my clients, however, it turned out to be different than what it seemed.
March 2014
When I
decided on signing up for a connection in March 2014, I was asked to provide certain documents and a
check of 20,000 INR (as installation fee), which I gladly gave away hoping the installation guys should be coming soon. I was promised that it would take
2 weeks to get the installation done (as they had to pull the wires from the other side of the road).
The setup wasn't completed, even after the 2 weeks’ time frame. I kept calling them but they stalled it by asking for a day or two. This went on for almost 15 days without getting any proper response, after paying the installation fee.
I understand that the setup of a lease line had certain requirements like: getting approvals from the building authorities, finding the ducts in the building from where the wires can be pulled till our office etc. For this reason, I hired people to set a route from where WE Internet was supposed to get the connection cables till our office. But WE did not send anyone on time to get it started.
April 2014
The third party vendor, who does the wiring and setup for WE Internet customers, informed me that the vendor is no longer associated with WE Internet. I called WE Internet to arrange an alternate vendor. Finally, around mid-April, WE Internet sent a technician named Dilip Kumar for the installation (which took another week to get done).
May 2014
The
installation was done and activated, but since day one of the service being activated, the speeds were really sad and the connection always dropped out frequently, resulting in a
long downtime of as high as 10 hours. I kept calling WE Internet to help me. I made it very clear that I was
not happy with what I got from them and if this continues, I will cancel the service. Instead of helping me through, WE simply asked me to drop in a cancellation email (which was not quite expected).
I was hung up on, given false commitments about downtime resolutions etc. (this was in May 2014). I could not afford such a loss of business due to downtime and made up my mind to switch providers, even if this meant shelling out a little extra money. Until now, WE Internet did not give me any sort of a written agreement nor an SLA as such. All they said was "the moment your service is stable, we will give you the SLA and other relevant documents". On this, another 15 days passed by with nothing manifested.
June 2014
I get a call from Kavita and she says that issue is with the device and she would replace the device for the WIRELESS CONNECTION that I got! This came as a rude shock to me as I never agreed upon a wireless service (I have had a rough time with wireless networks in the past). Neither Kavita nor Dilip informed me about it previously. Kavita asked me to try it and reassured me that it should work well. I was also assured that I won’t be charged for the usage as the billing cycle would start only once I am satisfied with the network stability. I reluctantly agreed at this point as I wanted operations to run smoothly. The
99.75% network uptime criteria was never met all this time. Kavita tried to help, but wasn't available many a times. No one else bothered to talk properly with me.
This got me frustrated. After all the conversations and endless waiting, I decided to move on (hoping I will get back my money as I never got what I signed up for). This wasn't the end of it, the hurdle was whom to ask for the refund. Parind Parekh (CEO of WE Internet) only had to say that he will get back to me on this, but I am still awaiting a reply from him.
1. They lied, and they lied on my face and never tried to retain me as their customer.
2. There was no reliability at all in terms of connectivity.
3. I tried everything from yelling to discussing to pleading but nothing seems to get them working for me.
I would not want anyone else to go through this again and so I suggest prospects to research thoroughly before investing their time, energy money and faith in a provider.
ghizal,
Aug 8, 2014
neways, im very dissatisfied with the speeds, hence looking for a change.
