Back to Square One

Its irritating that I have to post yet again on the Airtel Blackberry issue that I have been facing. Just when I was happy that its over, they screwed up again. The service is inactive again & I'm back to square one calling the ultra-inefficient Airtel Blackberry support team. I see the same things repeating again:

• The false promises to rectify things in 1 hour, by next day morning etc.,
• The refusal to give their boss's number to whom I want to escalate this matter
  
• Their unfulfilled promises to arrange for a call back with their boss
• Their meaningless 'I understand, sir' lines
• The messy co-ordination between their teams & the stupid calls saying the service is active, when it is actually not

I am tired of this shit! I dont know if I can sue Airtel for all their false promises & meaningless TAT (Turn Around Time) they quote on their call.

UPDATE on Apr 18 2009: Airtel restored the service today after contacting the appellate office again.

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Airtel does its job, Finally!

This is just an update on my previous post. Finally, after many many long conversations, escalation to airtel's appellate office, they have done their job. They have finally moved me to their new offering - BB Personal email plan on Apr 9th (8 days after the request was made!). I guess, the Airtel's BB support team will not forget my conversations with them. They got to remember it, if they are serious about improving their support mechanism.

Here's some free advice from me to airtel:

• Manage Customer Expectations Better: The first mistake from my viewpoint that airtel made is setting wrong expectation that the job will be done in 24 hours. They continued this everytime I made a call, 'It will be done in next few hours, sir', 'It will be done by tomorrow morning, sir', 'It will be done by today evening, sir' etc., Why can't they assess the complexity of the problem at hand & provide a more realistic estimate. Why set false expectation.
• Improve co-ordination within your support team: Everytime I called up, I used to get different response that left me confounded about the status of my request. If this is not enough, there were automated mails reaching me saying the service is 'active', when it actually is not. On top of it, there were weird SMS messages as well.
  
• Improve Technical expertise: Though I do not know much of the background details on this point. 8 days certainly is a very long time to service a simple plan change request. The technical team seems to have struggled in resolving the issue.
• Make your Nodal Officer reachable: Three times I had called up to talk to Airtel's Nodal officer, I had to wait for 5 - 7 minutes listening to an automated message saying 'Your call is important to us'. If it is important, why weren't you picking up the call?? The only response that I received on emailing the Nodal Officer were automated messages saying that the nodal officer will respond shortly, which never happened - so I had to approach the appellate office.
  

The plan itself is a cool one, however, getting there was the most painful part. Airtel's business team is coming up with good offerings, however such bad customer support experience will easily chase away potential customers.

If TRAI comes up with a regulation that the customers should be allowed to retain their mobile numbers when they switch across service providers, it will be great. I would have switched out of airtel to another provider, just because of this terrible support experience that I had to put up with.

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Airtel Blackberry Service Support Sucks!!!

Here I am blogging again after a relatively long pause. But it is not out of joy or enthusiasm that I'm posting this entry. It is rather out of frustration and a need to vent-out my anger that I am doing this. Please don't read this one unless you are terribly bored, coz its a long post of facts jotted down for god knows who!!

For about 5 months now, I have been using the Blackberry Internet service from Airtel on my BB handset. It has been working fine & I was happy, but for the fact that their data plan is not cheap. To minimize the cost, I was limiting myself to only checking/sending emails through this service. Recently, I noticed a new plan from Airtel (Blackberry Personal Email plan) which promised unlimited data at cheaper cost but restricted only to email and instant messaging services. This sounded like a good bargain to meet my requirements.

With that started my endless interactions with the Airtel customer service, especially their ultra-inefficient Blackberry Technical support team.

Interaction#1: Apr-01 Tuesday Morning around 10:09 am
When you call Airtel customer service number, there is no option in their IVR to direct the call to their Blackberry support team. After a long wait, someone informed that I need to call a magic number for Blackberry support!!

Interaction #2: Apr-01 Tuesday Morning around 10:19 am
On calling the magic number, I am told I need to send a mail to get my plan changed & the new plan activated. I am told, once the request is received, the plan change should happen in about 4 hours! Sounds great.

Interaction #3: Apr-01 Tuesday Morning around 10:46 am
Email sent to Airtel Blackberry support service requesting change of plan. Auto acknowledgement received in a few minutes.

Interaction #4: Apr-01 Tuesday evening around 07:58 pm
Email sent to Airtel Blackberry support service asking for the request status. Auto acknowledgement received in a few minutes.

Interaction #5: Apr-01 Tuesday late evening around 23:47
Dialled magic number. Support person informs that the request is already under processing. The old plan is deactivated and the new plan should be active in 15 minutes, after which I'll receive a SMS informing the new plan is active.

A long wait...hoping the service will be active...no SMS until 02:00 am....the handset data service status changes to 'Data Connection Refused'...but the new service plan is still not working....a few switching off and on of the device doesn't help...slept hoping the service should be working by next morning...

A SMS received at 2:32 am stating - Congrats, Airtel Live services are activated. Since your phone does not support download of settings call Airtel Customer service for manual configuration.

Holy crap!!! Its 8:00 am next morning Apr-02 Wednesday, the status is still 'Data Connection Refused'

Interaction #6: Apr-02 Wednesday Morning around 08:29 am
Called the regular Airtel Customer service as per the SMS instruction, after many exchanges - the support person clarifies that 'Airtel Live' is a totally different service, it is not same as the Blackberry service!! (I realized, I had toyed with the 'Airtel Live' icon on my handset last night before sleeping, this must have triggered-off that SMS). Frustration!!

Interaction #7: Apr-02 Wednesday morning around 08:40 am
Called the magic number again, the support person coolly says the plan is not yet activated. He needs to place a request to get it activated. I got more frustrated & reminded him that someone promised that the service should be active in 15 mins last night. He didn't seem to be apologetic about the whole thing. Instead, he pointed out that I had wrongly set up my email accounts in my old plan and that I should have set-up the email accounts through their website. But WTF, how am I supposed to know this 'chidambara ragasiyam' (Big Secret) unless someone from Airtel told me when I first bought the service!!
I demanded to speak to his manager. His supervisor came on line. Apologised & cooled my temper a bit. He promised that the service should be up in 4 hours by 1:00 pm. He gave me a complaint number (for the first time!) & assured that his team will take it as a priority & get it done. Sounded great again!

Apr-02 Wednesday evening 04:40 pm: Received a sms saying my old Blackberry plan has been stopped. But hey, my data service actually stopped last night itself. The 'Data Connection Refused' message is now gone. But the data service indicator has changed from 'edge' to 'GSM'. I just ignored the message & felt somewhat assured that the Airtel technical doing is doing some work on my request!

Interaction #8: Apr-02 Wednesday late evening 22:29 pm
Dialled the magic number again. Asked them what is the status against the complaint number. The support person informed that the new plan has been activated. I told her, but then the data service is still not working on my handset. She requested that I switch off, remove battery..etc., etc., and then it should work. I tried everything..guess what?! Right!, it didn't work.

Interaction #9: Apr-02 Wednesday late evening 23:13 pm
Called up the magic number again. Are the airtel support guys not instructed to talk loud enough? The support person surpised me saying that the request is still under processing. I felt, WTF. She then started explaining,"...we have activated from our end, but the server..." I had to clarify, I dont understand French or Greek. I was thoroughly confused. Are these guys playing some Apr-01 prank on me!!. WTF! WTF! WTF! I had to explain the whole series of my interactions with their support, still no sympathy from her end on my state!
I demanded to speak to her manager. The supervisor comes up on line. But I have run out of patience already...he said "probably by midnight or so" the service should be active. Again, WTF. "Probably?" "Midnight or so"? Do these guys really know what they are doing OR what they are supposed to do ? I demand that I speak to his manager. But luckily his manager isn't available. I asked him for his manager's number, so I could call that number the next morning. He refuses, saying he cannot divulge anyone's personal number. Again, WTF. I clarified that I dont need "personal" number and asked for an "official" number so I can escalate & get my problem resolved. Finally, he gave a Nodal officer's number. When I asked him, by when will the problem be resolved definitely, he said by 11:00 am next morning. I could only laugh.

Apr-02 Wednesday late evening 23:37 pm: I receive an email in response to my very first email, saying the service is activated. I laughed again, because the service is still not active and knew for sure, these guys really dont know what they are doing !!!

Its about 1:00 am now, the service is still not active. God only knows when that will happen. Airtel Blackberry Support team sucks. They suck bigtime & thats what I told them too.

And you know what? Try "Airtel Blackberry customer care" on google & the first link that you get is Airtel Blackberry Complaints. Way to go Airtel!

Blogcamp Bengaluru - March 14, 2009

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Instead of resting my ass on the couch & watching the match, quite unbelievably, I dragged myself against all the lethargy of a saturday morning into this Blogcamp Bengaluru held at St. Joseph's High School to meet fellow bloggers and hear them pitch on various topics.

Thanks to Ajay Jain, Amit Gupta & rest of the folks from IBNMS for organizing this event, it certainly turned out to be a day well spent for me. Thanks also to Seagate for sponsoring the event, for the free packaged water bottles, tea, snacks, awesome lunch & the t-shirt!

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Why would you turn in your grave?

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A lot of people seem to use this expression 'Turn in his grave' which I found funny. Everytime I hear this or read this, I imagine, graphically, a deadman trying to turn in his grave. Just try imagining it yourself & you will know why I find it funny. Whoever had come up with this expression must have had good imagination & wit.

Amused by it, I wanted to discover its origin. Even after googling for about an hour, I couldn't find any site offering me the etymology of this expression. Does anyone know how this expression came in to use? Do you 'turn over' when you are upset or uncomfortable about something? You may scratch your head, you may frown, you may shout, you may make faces, you may itch, but do you 'turn over' ? Or may be, is it that when you are asleep & you find the position uncomfortable, you may turn over to adjust yourself to a more comfortable position. Could that be a possible explanation?

What would a dead person, whose body was burnt in a funeral pyre, do? I read this blog where Mr. Pattabhi Ram says 'Gandhiji would be turning in his grave'. I tried imagining Gandhiji turning in his grave. But hey, Gandhiji's body wasn't buried. How could he be turning in his grave? That is what got me into wondering so much about this expression & triggered me to blog about it.

Then I said to myself what Kamal says in PKS - பழமொழி சொன்ன அனுபவிக்கனும், ஆராயக்கூடாது! (When someone tells you a proverb or an expression you should experience it, not research it!!)

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Brain's Storage Capakuty (capacity) & The Missing Options

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I was watching this movie today on HBO and was trying to figure out what movie is this? Have I seen it before? Keanu Reaves and Charlize Theron were there on the cast. After a while it came to me. I have seen this before. Not entirely, may be in parts. Whats the name of the movie? Its some 'October' or was it 'November'. Well, I could not get the name correctly before googling for it. It turned out to be 'Sweet November'. But that's not the point, my point is - Here's this movie which I had watched long long back, atleast about 5 years ago, had not even seen the entire movie, hadn't really liked or disliked it, but I still remember it!! It was still lying there in my brain somewhere hidden all these years. It brought out with it a memory of the good time that I had in New Jersey, because it was in NJ on cable that I had watched it.

All this got me into thinking how much of all that you have lived through is still lying there occupying the deep narrow bylanes of your brain?! Have you ever played this game of how far back can you go in your memory? How far back do you remember about your childhood? Well, certainly I dont remember the day I was born. I dont think I remembered that ever. The earliest memory that I have about my childhood is my first day (or may be second? or third?) to school, when my grandpa had taken me to school bought me some 'Kuchi's (Kuchi is a tamil word for those long flat chalk pieces that you use to write on your 'Slate' in school).

So, it appears that your brain starts recording things only from a certain point in time. Or may be it recorded things before that point too, but all of it were deleted as they were never accessed later. Or may be they are lying in there still but you got to try harder to access (that is, remember) them.

The other related point is how do you get rid of the junk - Things that you dont want to remember - so that you can free up some space for the good things that you want to remember. Unfortunately, there is no 'Select and Delete' option!!! Is reboot (Punar Janmam - Another Birth) the only option?!! We will possibly feel much less heavier (in terms of our thoughts), if we could delete some junk & may be it will even speeden up the processor!!

Pa sa ni sa ni sa ri sa!!!

How can you be an Indian, a blogger and not blog about Rahman today? I know there are those who'd say 'Dont see Slumdog Millionaire - it sucks' and then there are those who'd say 'Why should Indians care about Oscars, these awards are meant for hollywood people by their academy...we have our own national awards, the manikchand filmfares and the stardusts...' But I'm not going to break my head over those useless debates. I am just happy that Rahman has won a whole new audience & that more people will now have access to his wonderful music.

He truly epitomizes hardwork, passion, talent and above all that selfless humility. Here are my top favourites from Rahman's classics:

• Thoda Thoda Malarndadhenna
• Nila Kaaigiradhu
• Ye Ajnabi Tu Bhi
  
• Vellai Pookkal
• Puthu Vellai Mazhai
• Pa sa ni sa ni sa ri sa - Bombay Background music (couldn't find a link for this one!)
  

and many more. We have to thank the great Mani Ratnam for discovering this gifted genius!! In this world today, when there is widespread generalization of muslims as terrorists, this guy put all the bad guys to shame by declaring that he chose love out of the two choices he had, proving that such generalizations are insane & absurd.

I dont think these 2 Oscars will do any damage to his shy modesty. I can only foresee him composing more inspiring & soulful music, soaring to greater heights, feet well grounded!

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