New DSL connection - Airtel

August 9th, 2007

Following up on my earlier Tata Indicom VSNL broadband post , I am back now on writing about the current Airtel Broadband connection which is on use . However, just to let you know - Tata Indicom Broadband from VSNL sucks and sucks bigtime .  Since my last post , Tata was the only connection … and to my horrors , it was down more time than it was up . Now a connection being down is nothing surprising in India . But what is unacceptable is their horrible customer service . There is absolutely no connection between their departments … most of the time , you would connect to the helpline , which is obviously a call centre , and the person would go over the same old steps and once you have followed up on the steps , the best answer you would get is ” Thank you sir , your case has now been escalated .” On one time , i got my “case escalated” around 7 times , after which I got so furious , that i told the guy , if you escalate anymore , i can only think that Ratan Tata would be the person handling case now .  What i however found is that , not everytime they had technical problems , but they had massive “cable-cut” problems , supposedly their lines / overhead wires used to get cut / ripped off by petty thieves or competiting cable internet walas . They had / have absolutely no protection over their assets or means to keep it safe , thus leading to failure of service for over 200 customers . After being disasperated for 4 months of inferior service, I choose to take a secondary connection to survive .

It was a gamble , as Sify or Reliance connection was not possible yet and BSNL is not something i can afford to keep , with its high price .  I have not come across much people who had used Airtel as a broadband connection before and for all I knew this could be a good alternative . While taking the connections, they did fumble a little as even after I had paid for the application , they sent 4 different sales execs to get me to apply  . I had to tell each of them my application number and send them back

I have been now using Airtel broadband now , for the past 3 months , initially as a alternative to VSNL , which i used to switch as and when required …  but what happened was on one sunday night the Airtel connection went down . So i tried to switch over to VSNL to tide over the night … and lo and behold , i found out that even that was down . I called up Airtel helpline and the guy took my details and promised to get it fixed in a hour . I didnt have much hope as i have heard of those promises from VSNL several times, and usually no one works on weekends . BUt to my surprise they actually got it fixed in 2 hours flat and also called me to confirm it .

I currently no longer use Tata Indicom and am safely surfing on Airtel Airtel Broadband Website

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