The following is story of one of the most amazing stories of my life....
In the middle of last year I had been to the US for a few months so I had decided to terminate my reliance wimax connection (which i used during the day and at night i used the TATA 9-9 UL) but even after repeated calls prior to my departure to the US no 1 from reliance turned up to terminate the connection. I also sent them a few emails while i was in the US but nothing happened and utlimately the connection was terminated for non-payment. While all this was going on the TATA operator in my area decided to pack up his business and i lost the tata 9-9 ul connection too!! I didnt know of this until i tried to check my account status and found out that my user id was invalid but thats another story.
Coming back to reliance, after i came from the US i spend most of my time in Nasik so didnt really need a net connection in Mumbai, so i wasnt really worried. Now i am back in Mumbai for a while and i decided to get a new net connection. Tata was unavailable and the local cable operator quoted age old rates for a 512k connection. So i decided to go with reliance wimax the only option left. Sometime in the early part of Feb 2009 i applied for the connection and like before someone came to my place got the forms filled and too a cheque for the installation and first months rent (i opted for the 600k UL). After a slight delay i got my connection on the 23rd of Feb 2009 and ever since the first day it was a pain, extremely slow browsing, download speeds not crossing 30-35KB/sec, streaming video was impossible. I made regular complaints and they gave standard answer of everything will be alright in 24 hrs but almost a month went by and nothing happened. An engineer came home a couple of times but he couldnt fix anytthing. Apparently there was a base station problem in the area but that was soon rectified. But i coutinued to get pathetic speeds. Each time the guy would come check the anntena parameters which were always fine, do a couple of ping and download tests and email them to his seniors but still nothing.
Last friday that guy spent over 5 hrs in front of my laptop talking to his seniors or whoever and doing rubbish and still no result!!! But this is was nothing compared to what happened today. Today my connection isnt working at all (i am using a back up connection from my local cable op). I can login but nothing beyond that, so i called up the reliance cc and i was told that the cheque which i had given was returned by the bank!!!
Actually when i recieved the bill for the first month a few days back it showed at that i had to make a payment by 13th Apr, i found it strange and called up the reliance cc immediately as i had already given them a cheque for the 1st months bill and i was told that the bank had returned the cheque, i was totally suprised as it was next to impossible for that to happen. So i called up the bank asking for the status of the particular cheque and they said that the said cheque was unused! And i have no been charged any cheque reversal fee in my bank statements.
Bang today my connection isnt working and now comes the best part i arranged for this temp net connection from my cable op so that i could pay my bill online but reliance has messed that up there also! The email id which i had given them was mispelt by them so i cant register to pay my bill online as of now! But i saw another option wherein you just enter the user id and account no and you can login....i was happy but that i was short lived because it kept saying 'authentication failed', which i was told by the CC is because my account is suspended!!!!!!
So basically i am left with no reliance wimax connection and i cant pay my bill online either. So the only option to drop a cheque somewhere and pray!!
Edit : I when i asked if i could pay the bill by cash i was told that i need to enquire with the web world if they accept cash as not all web worlds accpet cash payments for wimax connections!!!
Basically i have to pray that i can make the payment somehow.....
What a ridiculous state of affairs in a city aspiring to one of the top in the world and a country aiming to become a super power....
Hope i didnt drag it too long....