Hello Kolkatans,
First of all merry christmas and season's greetings.
It's being a long time since I am writing in this thread. I require some help from you, if possible. I have posted in many threads here that I have been incorrectly billed on account of using dataone broadband (plan: home 500). They did not consider the night unlimited usage as free and gave me a huge bill considering the night unlimited usage as extra broadband usage charge over 1024MB. The first erroneous bill came in the 2nd month of usage only, i.e. July 2006. The connection was taken in June 2006. I have given numerous applications to the local AOTR, Commercial officer, SDE (Broadband), DGM (Broadband), GM (Broadband), etc since August 2006 to rectify my bill but they have fallen into deaf ears. My applications were accompanied with proper proof. Sometimes BSNL reported they have lost the application and told me to give another, sometimes the AOTR told me there are no free usage in Home 500
, sometimes they are on leave on visiting days, sometimes they come to office at 12:30PM (when visiting hours are from 11AM-1PM), sometimes they do not come to office altogether.
This has been continuing from August 2006 onwards. Now, since BSNL has been indefinitely delaying the correction of the erroneous telephone bills, additional wrong bills have been generated month after month. Since september'06, all incoming and outgoing facilities on the phone has been withdrawn and since december 2006, I am not being able to connect to Dataone. On checking from someone else's connection, I found that my username has been suspended, due to which I cannot extract fresh usage records from the site for months sept, oct, nov 2006 etc, if indeed I need them as proof for submitting a fresh application. Initially BSNL made some rosy promises regarding my application so I did not save the usage records for Sept, oct, nov 2006. I only have the usage records for july and august with the night unlimted usage clearly highlighted.
Since I am nnot being able to use any of their services (either bfone or dataone) since this month, I made an application to disconnect all services and take the ADSL modem from my house. But they did not receive the application saying that they need clearance from the accounts department. Then I made another application to send me a separate bill for the phone as the dataone bill is disputed. They did not entertain it. After all, the reason for the first application (disconnection) was for a reason. If I do not get to use ANY of BSNL's services, why should they charge me and why should I give useless rentals?
Myself and my family are thoroughly fed up, disgusted and want to severe all ties with BSNL inspite of them announcing rosy 1Mbps/2Mbps plans. So just wanted to ask you friends, do any one of you have had a similar experience with billing problems with BSNL? If so, please post here. My family is seriously thinking of moving to consumer court. We will appeal to correct the bill, that's the primary objective. Secondary appeal is to seek monetary compensation in terms of customer harrasment, delays and what not. They will have two alternatives, either to give the amount of money they have wrongly billed (in excess of Rs.50000 in over 5 months) or give me unlimited use of their 1Mbps connection for 100 months for Rs.500 monthly rental (Rs.500 X 100 = Rs.50000). They cannot charge a single paisa for it. If I win the case, they will be doomed.
If anyone has had a similar experience, please post here. Then we could move to court together.