Watch out! BSNL Chennai charges unfairly Night time usage, on DataONE
As I had feared elsewhere, BSNL Chennai penalises the (DataONE) users whose downloads span across the free night time bands. ie if you session started before 0200 hrs or ended after 0800 hrs, the whole traffic is treated as chargeable by their billing system.
Ironically, though I have had sessions through the early part of Oct 2005, starting precisely few minutes after 0200 & ending precisely few min before 0800, due their system clock being grossly wrong, the start time was pegged as 0152-0158 (a good 4 to 7 minutes late).
As a result, I feared that these traffic may be billed as chargeable. That is precisely what BSNL Chennai has done.
After repeated attempts thru help desk, technical team & NIB centre at Chennai, a tech SDE called back to confirm that their system clock was indeed wrong - they did not have for a few days during early Oct, proper synchronisation of their system clock with UTC or any such time server.
The Senior Divisional Engineer infact acknowledged that they will take my suggestion & see that their clock is synchronised, as suggestd. She also confirmed that in these instances, instead of treating the whole traffic as chargeable, they will treat the prorated part of traffic for the duration 0200-0800 as non-chargeable (particularly, in the absence of any mechanism in BSNL Traffic log system to measure exact traffic during these times.
Lo behold, all that is in air; they have merrily charged me on a full time basis.
I advise all BSNL users to first go to their URL http://10.240.43.216/webLogin.jsp and take a snap shot of their daiy traffic for back months, so that they can reconcile with BSNL bill received and raise dispute where you are unfairly charged with the evidence of their own log. Watchout! The Logs are available online accessible to you only for 3 months including the running calendar month! ie on 1st Dec you cannot access Sep 2005 traffic log records!
They had goofed up big time, the switch over monh (ie all traffic chargeable to night-time free effective 16th Aug 2005) billing; I was overcharged 400%. On challenging, not to mention repeated email, phone call to getsomeone to complaint to at all, I am assured that my calculations are correct & that they will reverse the over billing.
Another folly if and when they reverse the over billing; they DONOT give back the excess service tax+education cess that wa levied as per the wrong higher billing!
While I am sharing my experience with BSNL Chennai, it is best not to assume other BSNL centres will be different - 1) check whether you are billed only for what you used!? 2) take snapshot of traffic log from their system every month without fail & preserve.
Goodluck!
As I had feared elsewhere, BSNL Chennai penalises the (DataONE) users whose downloads span across the free night time bands. ie if you session started before 0200 hrs or ended after 0800 hrs, the whole traffic is treated as chargeable by their billing system.
Ironically, though I have had sessions through the early part of Oct 2005, starting precisely few minutes after 0200 & ending precisely few min before 0800, due their system clock being grossly wrong, the start time was pegged as 0152-0158 (a good 4 to 7 minutes late).
As a result, I feared that these traffic may be billed as chargeable. That is precisely what BSNL Chennai has done.
After repeated attempts thru help desk, technical team & NIB centre at Chennai, a tech SDE called back to confirm that their system clock was indeed wrong - they did not have for a few days during early Oct, proper synchronisation of their system clock with UTC or any such time server.
The Senior Divisional Engineer infact acknowledged that they will take my suggestion & see that their clock is synchronised, as suggestd. She also confirmed that in these instances, instead of treating the whole traffic as chargeable, they will treat the prorated part of traffic for the duration 0200-0800 as non-chargeable (particularly, in the absence of any mechanism in BSNL Traffic log system to measure exact traffic during these times.
Lo behold, all that is in air; they have merrily charged me on a full time basis.
I advise all BSNL users to first go to their URL http://10.240.43.216/webLogin.jsp and take a snap shot of their daiy traffic for back months, so that they can reconcile with BSNL bill received and raise dispute where you are unfairly charged with the evidence of their own log. Watchout! The Logs are available online accessible to you only for 3 months including the running calendar month! ie on 1st Dec you cannot access Sep 2005 traffic log records!
They had goofed up big time, the switch over monh (ie all traffic chargeable to night-time free effective 16th Aug 2005) billing; I was overcharged 400%. On challenging, not to mention repeated email, phone call to getsomeone to complaint to at all, I am assured that my calculations are correct & that they will reverse the over billing.
Another folly if and when they reverse the over billing; they DONOT give back the excess service tax+education cess that wa levied as per the wrong higher billing!
While I am sharing my experience with BSNL Chennai, it is best not to assume other BSNL centres will be different - 1) check whether you are billed only for what you used!? 2) take snapshot of traffic log from their system every month without fail & preserve.
Goodluck!