About life online and in Kotgarh & Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. हिमालय की गोद से
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Reliance NetConnect and DisConnect in Himachal Pradesh
I had bought a Reliance Net Connect ZTE USB modem keeping in mind my traveling schedule and and was promised four times faster speed than the usual dial up connection. It is a wireless (mobile) internet service and can be used anywhere Reliance CDMA service is available. The speed was fine in Shimla for a few days, where I have a BSNL broadband at home. A couple of weeks later I tried this service at my village in Kotgarh and was extremely disappointed with the speed. The connectivity was either dead slow or almost dead!
My woes started with a bleak signal. Just 2 bars on the signal tab. I knew there were couple of Reliance towers, just across the hills. Called up a Reliance guy in Rampur and next day the signal strength reached to 4 and occasionaly touching 5 bars. This accomplished tried my hand on surfing but it was again dead slow. I could somehow surf till 10 pm and at dot 10, the net simply stopped as if someone had switched off the button. Called the same guy again, and explained my problem. Bingo.. next day there was trace of internet after 10 pm. This aroused my suspicion that there was something fishy with overall service of Reliance in rural areas!!
I was given a number of one Mr. Prashant (9318855055) who happens to be Reliance tech guru based in Shimla. He listened to me patiently the first time, took down my address and promised to send one of his techies to look into my problem. Nothing happened for the next 10 days. Next time I called him up, he was curt and told me to connect with some other user in the area and check if he too had the same problem! Now excuse me, but is this my fucking job to find another sucker in the area? I happen to be the only sucker facing the Reliance (dis)service in the entire area! Wise people stay away from Reliance!! I sent an email to the customer service mentioned on their website. One fine day got a call from a Reliance number putting me on hold for 5 minutes and kept on playing the Reliance signature tune and then disconnected. Got a mail next day from customer care saying they tried contacting me but were unable to do so and the matter ended up there! The service is pathetic no doubt and after sales and customer services even worse with Reliance.
I tried doing tracers for the websites. Most of the time I get Request Timed Out error after 4 hops. I tried pinging sites, I got the same error. Reliance tried to put blame on weak signals but at times the signal was at 4 or 5 bars, still the sites wouldn’t open. I have been cheated by the company and am left with a useless gizmo worth 3000 rupees. I am skeptical about using it while traveling as I doubt it will work anywhere outside Shimla. All my money has been swindled by Reliance Communications.
Words of wisdom from 9,500 ft in the Himalayas - Stay away from Reliance in Himachal. Don’t get fooled by the tall claims being dished out by the company. This is a useless company with even more useless services. Also stay away from any form of wireless internet gizmos be it GSM or CDMA. Best use the good old BSNL landlines.
PS - I will post my experiences using the Net (dis) Connect at other places in a fortnight’s time before throwing it in the trash bin!.
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3 comments for “Reliance NetConnect and DisConnect in Himachal Pradesh”
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I read this somewhere, Reliance 3GCDMA = 3 Gujju Chor Dhirubhai, Mukesh,Anil!
Nityin,
You are right. Reliance is actually non-reliance. You cannot rely. The only thing good about Reliance is their PR service and the loads of money they spend on PR activities and keeping themselves alive in the Press.
I wish had they spent even half of the money they spend on PR activities, their service surely would have been good.
I am a journalist as many of the PR guys handling Reliance may know me. I need to be connected always. I did a lot of survey before I bought one USB connection for myself. Reliance, the dealers said was ’sasta’ but could not be relied. Tata Indicom was still better. But I still preferred Idea’s Netsetter, which is good as of now. May be due to fewer connections right now and tie-up with other GSM players.
Even the guys at Reliance in private and “off the record” accept that their service and customer care sucks.
The best idea is to call them up, and not to disconnect at all and ask them to rectify the problem and ask for their seniors. What I know about customer care is that they are not supposed to disconnect the call, unless you do it. Once they are on line, try and engage them in to a talk for hours together and tell them, you’ve wasted my time, I wanted to have some fun online on the internet but as your service sucks, so now let me have fun at your cost. Tall to me, about the weather, your girlfriend and if the economic recession is the reason for the poor service and how many of them have got pink-slips. And does Anil Ambani meet them personally. How does he look? And so forth…
Tell them to take the gadget back. Ask for the complaint number etc.
Tell me if your problem still exists, with your Complaint number and the names of the guys who handled your calls at what time and for how long your conversation went. May be I can take your case further with newspapers here or with some senior guys in Reliance here.
@Surinder
This worked perfectly in Chandigarh last week without any interruptions. I will be testing this further in other Himachal cities. I guess it is the same old problem, things work fine in urban areas and do not in rural areas. At least they must have told me flatly about this at the time of purchase.
@Neetika
You have put words to my thoughts…
Don’t know about the first two but completely agree with you on the third name!