Reliance Internet Connection – A techie’s experience

We applied for a reliance communications internet connection in Jan 2008 for our home that is located in Anayara. After making a call to the reliance office two persons came to our home and collected INR 500.00 as initiation charges with the promise to finish installation within a maximum period of two weeks. They gave a receipt no. 17001013929228 dated 08-01-08.

Even after one month nobody turned up and therefore my home mate (who is studying for MD in medical college TVM) made personal visit to their office. The authorities informed him that the request was being processed and the connection would be installed with in a period of one week after obtaining permission from their higher office which processed the application.

Nothing happened even after two weeks and my roommate had to make yet another visit to enquire at the Reliance office in Kowadiar. Then they informed that the connection was accepted and the installation would be done in two to three days.

As with all other previous experiences this time too nobody turned up and after a period of one month during which he made two more visits the status of the connection still remained indefinite.

After that period, on the next visit, the authorities revealed that no connection was possible in the Anayara region as it was already saturated and therefore we had to wait until further up gradation was initiated. They knew about this situation much earlier but didn’t give any information regarding the same then.

Finally we decided -‘that would be it with reliance!’ and made clear our unwillingness to wait further. We requested for a refund of the money paid as installation charges. The authorities said that they would process the refund request at the earliest and the refund cheque would reach our home address with in a period of ……… again ……. two weeks.

After one month again when no refund cheque arrived the room mate again visited their office just to find that they had not even initiated the refund request. On asking for the reason they kept on looking at each other’s faces and kept dialing numbers which were always engaged. But they still did not forget to promise the refund within one week.

The situation never got better. Each visit or phone call after that always got unfulfilled promises like ‘this is the first thing that is going to be done in this office tomorrow morning’. To date my friend almost made 15 visits and over 20 phone calls for the purpose. They kept on providing new information about accounting technicalities during each visit. At the end of the ninth visit they told him that the Kowadiar office was not the one responsible for the refund and it had to be done at the office at Keshavadasapuram.

There too the response was no different. He was literally shocked when an employee at Kowadiar office advised him to shout at the person incharge in the Keshavadasapuram office to receive a faster refund.

He is going to make his sixteenth visit this week. If the unlikely event of receiving the refund cheque occurs we will distribute sweets (not kidding!!) to all the employees in the Reliance office along with this note – ‘Thank you very much for refunding INR 500.00 after 16 visits and 20 phone calls in a period of over 7 months to two offices. Your customer service is unimaginably wonderful’.