First, I collected all your bills and receipts from the month my broadband billing started(for me it started from march).
I went directly to the Customer Relations Officer(CRO) today. Explained that I needed to view the hourly billing data from bsnl failing which I would be unable to continue as a broadband customer.
I showed the CRO the printout of the august internet usage(from dataone website) and august's DU meter(dumeter.com) reading. Only 3 days during the month I had exceeded 67MB/day(2000MB/31 days).
She said "the bsnl office, my exchange or the exchange where all the internet equipment is located in bangalore cannot not provide hourly billing. This is a fault of bsnl".
I asked, if its a fault of bsnl, why do I have to pay the price for that? She said that the "chinese people"(
Huawei engineers) were working on it and it is a big problem for bsnl all over India. I asked once they are done modifying the system, will it be able to provide hourly billing from july onwards? Answer: NO. When will this normal/free bandwidth recording software system be in place? NO IDEA
CRO: "To ensure that the bsnl servers record the free usage separate from normal usage, you need to SHUT OFF your modem at 2am and restart it a few minutes later. Switch off the modem again at a few min to 8 and restart it a few min after 8am." Quite unbelievable. Hello... this is 2005! Why is your internet
ADSL 2+ and billing system still green revolution India 1960??
I found out that this free usage, 1GB, 2GB tariff hourly recording software is completely new to huawei. Wherever they have implemented broadband solutions, its all been unlimited. Only in India has Huawei had to work on broadband caps.
I had been charged excess billing for aug, sep and oct. On oct 22, I submitted a letter to change my tariff plan from home 1000 to
business 1200 starting nov 1. My total internet usage(2GB+free usage) from aug,sep, oct has been 3.6,3.8 and 3.2 GB respectively and therefore it is within the 4GB limit of the business 1200 plan.
She asked me to write a letter saying that because of billing confusions, business 1200 would be applied from august onwards. I submitted this letter. She faxed the work order to some other bsnl office in bangalore and got my plan changed in the next half hour. After lunch, she got new bills prepared for aug, sep and oct.
After all the adjustments, I saved a paltry 1100 Rs. Since my plan changed from H-1000->B-1200, I had to pay 3x225(200+12.5 % tax) Rs for the plan change from aug onwards. Thus the 1800 Rs I saved shrunk to 1100 odd.
Frankly, bsnl is sucking major ass. While I waited 3 hours in the bsnl office for my billing problems to be sorted, I saw a 35 year old woman(deputy to the CRO) jump with joy and shout like a kid when she received a call that former president krn died. The CRO is kinda of a good woman(wants to solve problems) but there are so many incompetent, lazy bums in the office, I was getting a running commentary of this while the CRO was working on my billing. These people are so inefficient that if the govt mandated that private companies be allowed to share bsnl's phone lines to provide broadband and voice.. bsnl would be in major trouble.