• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

D. Murali

TYPE www.ddsl.net to access the site of DishnetDSL Ltd and you would be in for a cyber assault onscreen, with boxes that open in quick succession, as if you were clicking a porn site. `Attention Customers' screams one box that blocks a portion of the screen.

"Based on the Government Order Issued by Government Of India, Groups.Yahoo.Com is blocked. Please Click Here to refer the G.O."

The truth is that the G.O. is not for all of groups.yahoo.com but only kynhun. The day's news had it that, in perhaps the first instance of its kind, the Government has asked Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block an e-mail group of the that Hynniewtrep movement, a militant organisation from Meghalaya.

Another box that blocks a massive chunk of pixels shouts: "Due to spurious traffic generated towards our network, the ICMP traffic has been blocked temporarily. We are in the process of resolving the situation. Inconvenience caused highly regretted."

You would be more interested in getting rid of the box rather than wondering what ICMP is. There is a third box that begins softly: "Dear NOIDA customers, you can now access DishnetDial by just dialling 172341. Kindly discontinue dialling by Prefixing `91'.

Happy Surfing."

If that makes them happy, bad news is the fourth box that reads: "Attn: Noida customers: Due to scheduled Maintenance work at Noida, there might be some outage in our services during the early hours of Sunday 21st Sep 2003 between 12.00 AM to 01.00 AM. Inconvenience caused highly regretted."

DDSL is "India's premier Internet Service provisioning enterprise", states the site in "about us". It has "a formidable network infrastructure covering 4 state-of-the-art Network Operating Centres (NOCs), 34 Points of Presence (PoPs) covering over 200 cities".

All that is fine, but I lose my home connection all of a sudden, in the middle of the night even as I finish a story, I do what Bill Gates usually advises: shut down, restart, try again.

When a few repeated attempts do not yield fruit, I call up the customer support and a surprise awaits me there: "You have the last month's bill for Rs 460, and reconnection charges, Rs 250, so you pay Rs 710. And that can be only tomorrow."

Wait, I say, let me check if I got the bill. Well, yes, it is there, and it came about two weeks back. "You could have sent me a reminder," I reason. "We sent a reminder yesterday," says the operator, and I admire at the information that he is able to lay hands on.

One more checking of my inbox, and I find there is a mail from `support@eth.net' but that is about some promo of a new scheme of connectivity, rather than a reminder.

Over the next few minutes, I tell the operator at the company end that it is not fair to abruptly stop the connectivity without even the courtesy of a reminder. Because we all get plagued by umpteen unwanted mails that want us get free from debts, slim faster, perform better, refill ink cartridges, obtain home loan, and so forth, a mail with billing particulars easily tends to get buried in a mass of spam.

Also, it is not that reminders really cost the ISP company tons of money, as it happens with bodies such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India that still rely on the old procedure of sending registered reminders to the members reminding them about the fee dues.

Well, the Dishnet staff doing the graveyard shift is sympathetic but is helpless. I tell him they cannot do this to somebody who used to leave credit balance in the account for months. "Is there anybody I can call to complain?" I plead. "No," is the polite answer. "Only tomorrow."

Okay, the long, disconnected night is over and I wait till their office is open to get in touch with the PR man. It is only a voice box that responds. Next step is the corporate office, VP Finance. He is not there, says his PA, and moreover the VP has nothing to do with operations.

You are in the company, I ask, billing is money, money is accounts, and accounts is finance, and you should be able to tell me a way out of the problem. "No, sorry," and the line goes dead.

Then I call the numbers listed in the directory, some of which ring and don't respond, and the rest that give `engaged' tone. Typical in any customer service, I resign to my fate.

This is no palatable dish, we all know. I dread to imagine what would happen if there is a patient who is on life-support system, and we have a bunch of these Dishy guys who are manning the ward, and suddenly they find that the bills are not paid...

EeAndOhEe@hotmail.com

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
`India is still the best bet for outsourcing'

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line