Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

This is the first time I am this angry with Airtel, I have used this mobile service all my life but the blatant disregard for the customer is appalling to say the least. I am forced to write this mail as they are refusing to respond to my emails and are not resolving my complaint. In fact today I received a SMS that my query has been replied to and in truth it hadn’t been replied to. Some call center supervisor on a power trip. No response to any follow-up emails either. Just to make it clear I used strong language in my mails but no insults or profanities.

I am dividing this post into 2 parts :

1. Advertisements via phone calls – Airtel has this number 9849805941 which was calling (is still calling) me once a day and plays ads. Since I had registered for DND I contacted Airtel to stop spamming me with ads. Soon Airtel came up with an explanation that this was not a telemarketer number and hence I should complain to the Police if I want these ads to stop, can you imagine that ? They had the audacity to say they want to protect the privacy of this number who makes 1 call to me (and other numbers ? ) every day with ads.

I have also escalated this matter to the nodal officer who is also yet to get back to me, even more suspicious is the fact that I cannot call this number and the line says the number doesn’t exist but still I get one ad from this number everyday.

2. Service messages and Automatic Service subscription – TRAI says that all VAS services need an explicit customer approval to get activated, of course the agents sitting there who want to make Airtel some fast and unethical buck don’t seem to think so. This had happened to me twice in Delhi and twice now in Hyderabad and the modus operandi is even more brazen. After my complaint I got a call from a call center agent who said “these services are activated from back end” , wow, ofcourse he didn’t give that in writing but call record will show he said that. He also claimed his supervisor was not there when I asked to speak to him. When I asked him to tell his supervisor to call me back the supervisor magically re-appeared. Wonder if these call center people are Airtel employees or vendors.

The customer care responses to my mails on the matter are below  (extraneous stuff removed) :

Mail No. 1

With reference to your E-mail dated 08/10/2010, you have expressed concern regarding balance deduction for your Airtel mobile number <snip>.

We realize that this situation must have inconvenienced you.
We would like to inform you that Cricket Alert Service is active and there is a charge of Rs.5/-. Hence, the balance was deducted.
Deactivation of Cricket Alert Service service: 
The Cricket Alert Service has been deactivated with effect from 08/10/2010, as per your request. Confirmation message will be sent on successful deactivation.
Adjustment:
We would like to inform you that the amount of Rs. 5/- has been processed and will be credited on your account within 24 hours.

Mail No. 2 (the same service had again been activated by another agent) – During this period I was on vacation and my phone was switched off so I didn’t realize the balance deduction till I wrote them a mail :

> Thank you for writing to Airtel.
>
> With reference to your e-mail dated 17/11/2010, you have expressed concern
> regarding promotional call and message , deactivate the Value Added service
> for your Airtel mobile number <snip>.
>
> We realize that this situation must have inconvenienced you. However, we
> assure you a prompt action to solve the concern.
>
> We would like to inform you that as per our records there is a charge of Rs.
> 1.50/- deducted for the activation of Cricket Service.
>  
> We would like to inform you that the Cricket Service  has  already been
> deactivated on 03/11/2010.

I am still waiting for my Rs.1.50 refund and stoppage of these advertising calls. I am sick and tired of Airtel’s brazenness now and seriously want to switch over all my connections as soon as number portability comes over. This is also the most serious I have ever been about consumer court, totally aghast at the service dished out by Airtel to me (4-5 year old customer)

The car in happier times

I own a Maruti 800 car which I like to maintain, the first owners of the car were a little careless which caused the car to rust at a few places, but ever since I have got the car I have tried to maintain it well. One of the most important things to maintaining a car well is of course good servicing from an Authorised Service Center.

If you search around the internet, you realise that Maruti Service Masters is supposed to be the best (and the most expensive) service centre in New Delhi. I took a day off as there is a lot of rush on weekends and was off to their service centre. The 1st time I used them they had messed up the butterfly valves in my engine, at that time I thought it might be an exception to the kind of service they offer.

At the service center, I noticed a distinct lack of concern for the customer, they get a lot of customers due to their name so do not need to take customer delight seriously.The reception person was more interested in passing the blame rather than assigning a SA and pointed me to a senior who told me they are short of staff. In the middle of the week ? I waited for half an hour before a service advisor came out and actually took down my problems.

He advised some changes, one of them un-necessary, he recommended the change of the water pump which I agreed to as he said it would lead to better fuel efficiency and smoother performance. The car servicing estimate came out to Rs. 11000 , which is pretty much near the resale value of the 14 year old car, but it being my first ever car I agreed to the uber expensive service with the assurance that engine work be carried out by an experienced mechanic who understands the old Japanese carburettor engines.

The service took one whole day and next day when I came the car was dirty from the outside, while I made payments, the car was wiped once more and cleaned for outer appearance.

Here is where it went downhill for me:

1. The service advisor insisted on a blank feedback card, thinking at that time that he had done an impeccable job, I agreed and gave him the blank feedback form which he literally snatched from my hands. He had given me a test drive.

2. On reaching home, I rolled up the windows and saw major brown dust on the windows, I didn’t feel it was worth the concern and wiped it myself.

3. After 2 days I took out the car and noticed engine oil underneath the car and lots of it. I called the service advisor and asked him what I should do, his response was to bring the car on a weekday. He did not offer to get it collected from my home or to service it on a weekend. He said there is too much rush on weekends.

4. The next day I went to college , at the college parking I noticed a super large amount of engine oil leakage, scared, I came back home early and stopped using the car so as not to cause engine damage. Also the car was giving blue smoke on cold starts.

5. Angry, I wrote 2 emails to Maruti to which I got automated responses, I decided to get the engine fixed outside the MSM as engine oil was low and I couldn’t go to their workshop with a car low on engine oil and leaking it steadily. The same day the customer care lady called me, she was apologetic, +1 to MSM here but she couldn’t really help me, promised to get back to me.

6. She didn’t get back for 7 more days, I got the timing seal issue fixed and paid 900 to the local garage to repair the problem + cost of engine oil. The blue smoke problem has persisted. She called again after 7 days and again apologised but didn’t offer to do anything, did ask me to choose MSM for my next service. I told her I would never like to visit them again.

7. I emailed Maruti and asked for a fresh feedback form to incorporate the low level of service given to me. I got no response. I even told them about blank feedback being collected, no response to that too. 3-4 days later, dad got a call from the service advisor, he gave him my number, I got the call during class and was unable to pick it up. So the grand total of 1 missed call was received by me.

8. The blue smoke at cold start issue was discussed with an engineer at Maruti (who prefers to remain anonymous), he says the MSM people probably ruptured a valve seal,

This causes engine oil to leak overnight and when I do a cold start, I see blue smoke. He told me that complaints are a regular feature at MSM and they cant handle the huge rush. Most complaints are swept under the carpet.

He told me the timing seal issue was a direct consequence of bad workmanship during water pump change.

I have decided to take things to a logical conclusion, I will keep contacting Maruti till they accept that the levels of service are actually below par at Maruti Service Masters Delhi and I have asked for them to repair my car’s blue smoke issue at another Authorised Service Center free of cost.

Till then, let this serve as a warning to anyone looking to get their car serviced at Maruti Service Masters Okhla, they seem good, but very little accountability. One expects this from them but when the company also ignores customer feedback, you know its a problem.

Ask any newcomer to the Internet if he has ever been conned, the answer would invariably be yes. Here comes the concept of a Trusted Internet , wouldnt it be great if before interacting with someone on the Internet, you would know if he/she is genuine ? , what if there was some way to tell that the person whom you are buying that auction product is going to defraud you.

Trusted Internet as a concept appeals to me, although i do feel that a 100% trusted Internet will never be a possibility. The use of secure certificates i believe is a part and parcel of trusted Internet. You can now know which sites to trust with personal info and which sites not to trust. The Identity of sites can be verified, so can the fact that your communication with a certain site is properly encrypted.

In the trusted Internet of tomorrow, computers shall be able to take decisions autonomously with a very high accuracy rate as to the authenticity of transactions. However money always comes and spoils the fun. I will take the example of our college computer labs, all of them run on AVG, and all of them have viruses because initially no AV was loaded on them and only when viruses started emerging the software was loaded as it became necessary. In case this trust was free, all S/Ws were free , wouldn’t it be better ? Comodo is looking to introduce free tools to make the Internet a little bit better for all

I have linked to Comodo above, i came across this concept of  a trusted Internet from their site only. I must say its a very interesting read

What do you feel ?

Well, we had made these videos a few months ago telling people how to secure their Wifi connections quite frankly because many people use other people’s internet without their knowledge. We had made the videos to prevent pranks where kids use other people’s networks to save some money.

But the recent blasts in India opened a new picture. Terrorists used the Wifi connection of an American citizen living in Navi Mumbai to send threatening emails and emails taking responsibility for blasts. As an Internet user, its your responsibility to secure your connection and make sure criminals are not using it. The following 2 videos will help you secure your Wifi connection. I will also make another video, showing you how to implement MAC address filtering to further strengthen your Internet security.

These videos are for Linksys WRT54G series, if you have some other router, refer to your user manual to see how this is done or search youtube, someone might have made a video for your model too.

Securing your Wifi connection (WPA security , only people will passphrase will be able to logon to it wirelessly)

Password protect your Router also

This post is issued in public interest

A word of caution for anyone using WordPress version 2.1.1 , upgrade it to 2.1.1 immediately. It appears that some crackers gained access to WordPress servers and changed a part of the WordPress 2.1.1 download code.They changed the code in two WordPress download files (“theme.php” and “feed.php”) that would allow someone to execute remote PHP code on your blogs. Thankfully the guys at WordPress detected this in time and averted a catastophe (hopefully).

Anyway i am safe now and hope your version is safe too !

Got Questions about this ?

You can email them to 21securityfaq@wordpress.org , which has been specially setup to deal with this particular problem.

This is from one of our readers (didnt know we had any )

Anyway , i got a call around 2 years ago from a bank (bank name not listed for privacy concerns) , they told me i had ‘won’ a lucky draw , i would get a free credit card and also a free bag. I never really liked the credit card concept but thought a free one wont hurt. I called them to my home and i signed on the dotted line.

After 5 days i receive the cards , an addon card was also sent w/o my knowledge. it was ok till then , but 2 days later i got a bill for rs.2000 for the cards , horrified i called the bank customer care which was not responsive and i was put on an indefinite hold. then i decided to write an email to my bank. They replied 14 days later promising to look into the matter. I replied ‘i am not going to pay’ and threatened consumer court. Within 1 day they send me a reply with 2 options

1. Cancel the card

2. pay the fee and get 500 reward points

By this time i had realised the direct selling agents were actually frauds so i didnt really want them to have any commission and i decided to cancel the card, tore it diagonally and sent them back to the bank’s office.

Our take is that always take it from written from the Direct Selling Agents who offer you credit cards. Anyone who says you won in a lucky draw is lying, banks dont conduct lucky draws to see who can be their credit card customer for free. Similar things happen in insurance sector also , a story about that too will be published soon.