Oh! Singtel, what the hell?

‘Sheer Incompetence’, ‘Utter Arrogance’ and ‘Complete disregard’ towards customer needs are the terms which I can think of right now to describe what Singtel is doing to me. As you might have probably guessed by now, this is yet another story of bad customer care and one more example which illustrates their arrogance and negligence towards the customers. I am thinking loud, “Is it just me or is it like this for everyone in Singapore?” I am not talking about some third world country where connectivity is a ‘not-so-heard’ term. I am talking about Singapore, one of the world’s most efficient countries.
It all started when I decided to relocate. I knew from my past experiences that transferring my internet connection will be one hell of a ride. So I decided to start a bit early. I called the Singtel customer care hotline (1688) three days before I was to move in.
Day 1 – 1 day. (Dec 16th, After waiting 5-10 minutes in the waiting queue which is there for all the calls)
Me: Hello, I am relocating house and I need you to relocate my internet and phone connection.
Reply: Sure sir, what is your address? And what is your postal code. We need the postal code, without that we cannot process a relocation request.
Me: I am sorry, I am not sure about the postal code as of now. I will give you a call after checking it out.
Day 2 – 3 days. (Dec 18th)
Me: Hello, I am relocating house and I need you to relocate my internet and phone connection. Here is my address and the postal code.
Reply: Thank you sir, we just need the address to check it.
Me: (Thinking: what the hell?)
Reply: Hi sir, as of now there is an existing connection in this address you gave us. We will have to do a rewiring for you and for that you need an appointment. As of now, you’ll have to wait atleast one month for a rewiring appointment.
Me: OMG! Please tell me whether there is any alternative.
Reply: First you have to terminate the connection and give us a call. I will put your name for an appointment now. After you terminate the connection let us know, we will activate the phone line and you have to do the self configuration.
Me: That’s ok, configuring the router is not a problem.
Reply: Also sir, you won’t be able to retain the present phone number. I will give you a call later with the probable numbers you can choose from.
Me: It’s ok, I don’t really care about the number, I only need the internet connection.
Later that day, she did give me a call and I choose a number. She said that she will log everything in the system so that after termination, I can call them again for activation.
Day 3 – 6 days. (Dec 21st, I communicated with the owner and he terminated the existing connection)
Me: Hello, I am relocating house and I need you to relocate my internet and phone connection. I hope all the details are already logged in the system. You can do the activation as soon as possible from there.
Reply: Hi, who am I talking to again? I am really sorry to tell you that nothing about you have been logged in the system. Could you please give me your info?
Me: Ok, here is my details…
Reply: What is your new address with postal code?
Me: (Thinking: Holy God! Is this really happening again?) Hey my dear fellow, I have already given all the details.
Reply: Is it so? Then do you have a telephone connection in your new place already?
Me: There is a socket there.
Reply: Do you know whether its active?
Me: How am I supposed to know that? You are the person to tell me right? I already talked to a customer care officer and the person I talked to, said that activation can be done from there.
Reply: Sorry sir, I don’t know what you are talking about, Click! (And the line went dead)
I dialed again.
Me: Hello, I am relocating house and I need you to relocate my internet and phone connection. Please someone tell me what is going on. I already have done everything and now someone is telling me nothing has been done. What is going on?
Reply: Hi sir, all your details are logged in the system. You have an appointment for rewiring one month from now.
Me: I don’t need rewiring, the existing connection is terminated. You can activate it from there, if possible today itself.
Reply: Sorry sir, we can activate it, but it will take 3 days. You can have the phone line up and running by Dec 24th 5 pm.
Me: If there is some problem, then I will be able to get after 26th right? (‘cos it is the holiday time)
Reply: I am afraid so sir.
Me: Ok, so I am expecting to get a dial tone in my phone by 24th 5pm and no one will be coming for my assistance right?
Reply: That’s right sir, you have to do it on your own. If there is any problem, you can call our technical help desk or take another appointment.
Me: Thank you very much.
Day 4 – 9 days: (24th noon, during lunch @ office, I got a call)
Caller: Hi sir, I have an appointment to rewire your apartment.
Me: Who? What? When?
Caller: I want to check when you will be available?
Me: Are you really calling from Singtel?
Caller: Yes, when do you want me to come?
Me: Ok, I’ll get out of office early today and you can come by 5pm.
I am waiting for the caller and I called the customer care to clarify.
Me: Hello, I have already given a relocation request and the deadline given to me was 5pm on 24th Dec. But there is still no dial tone in my phone.
Reply: Let me check sir. Hello sir, according to our system, your connection is already up and running. Have you tried configuring your router?
Me: There is not even a dial tone in my phone and how am I supposed to configure a router?
Reply: You can try that sir. But then again, this is the sales dept sir, and for configuration enquiries, you can call our technical help desk.
Me: ok thank you. (You guys sux)
After some time the rewiring guy came. He said that he is here is rewire my telephone line. He poked around with the telephone line and some boxes and he also made some calls to his office (at least that’s what he told me)
The guy: I am really sorry sir, they did the wrong wiring at the exchange. So we have to do the rewiring. It will be up tomorrow first thing in the morning
Me: I really need this before the holidays, and are you sure you’ll give me this tomorrow?
The guy: oh! Sorry sir, I forgot that tomorrow is a holiday. We will do it tomorrow first thing in the morning and give you a call in your mobile and landline.
‘Tomorrow-first-thing-in-the-morning’ is over, afternoon is over, evening is over and the next day is over and at noon, I got fed up. And I decided to call again.
Day 5 – 11 days: (26th morning, From this point onwards, I had to explain my whole story till now which takes around 20 minutes plus the waiting time which is around 5-10 mins)
Me: Hello, I am relocating house and I need you to relocate my internet and phone connection. The technician who came to my house told that he will fix the internal problem and didn’t call me back till now. I am still waiting and there is no dial tone in my phone.
Reply: I will put you for another appointment sir.
Me: Now way I am going for another appointment, get me someone who can help me right now.
Reply: I will transfer this call to the technical department sir.
Reply: (from technical department) Let me check this sir, (put on hold). Hello sir, I have checked with the telephone department and they say it will be working by today 5pm. You can start using you phone by then.
5pm is over, 6pm is over and I called again to the technical department.
Me: I am supposed to be using my phone by now, but I believe I can’t do that without a dial tone.
Reply: (After all the explanations and clarifications and holdings for around 30-40 mins) I am really sorry sir, right now, the sales is closed and all I can do is to escalate this issue to the sales department and tell them to contact you first thing on Monday morning.
Day 6 – 13 days: (28th morning, first thing in the morning, I am calling them)
Me: Are you planning to give me my phone connection any time this year?
Reply: Sir, this is the sales, as per our records, your connection is up and working fine from 24th evening, I will transfer this call to the technical department.
After 20 – 30 minutes of explaining my whole story
Reply: Let me put you on hold sir. (After 20 minutes on hold) I have updated this with the technical department sir.
Me: So am I not talking to the technical department?
Reply: You are talking to the technical department for the internet and TV, the telephone is another department sir.
Me: Ok, so what can you do about this now? May be if you can track down the technician who promised me the phone line ‘first-thing-tomorrow-morning’, you can know what happened actually.
Reply: The only thing I can do is to get you another appointment tomorrow between 11-1pm (for which I may have to take off tomorrow from work) and I have specifically told the operator not to leave your house with your giving you a working telephone line.
Me: Thank you very much. Hope this story will be ending once and for all tomorrow.
And the above sentence happened around 30 minutes before I write this. I am waiting for all this to end and to get a written statement from the technician or whoever it is, that my phone was not working for half a month after I raised my relocation request. Let me see whether they will reduce this month’s bill to half. If I delay the payment of my bill, they fine me. Then they should reduce my bill to half if there was no service for half the month because of their fault.
Is there anyone out there from Singtel - I don’t care – who it is, who can explain all these? This is only about my Singtel internet connection and my mobile phone carrier is also Singtel. Don’t get me started about it. So, now my readers may wonder why I am still sticking on with this connection. That is ‘cos I signed a two year contract with Singtel which ends only in 2011 and I have already given S$400 as advance. So I am stuck with this “fill-in-the-blank-as-you-wish” operator for one more year. Now I know, even in Singapore (which I thought is a flawless country) there can be flaws.
Once again, “Is it just me or is it like this for everyone in Singapore?”

Google: The real Skynet?

I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I hear Google has taken over the world or is going to be the ‘Skynet’ or the ‘Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’ of earth. I have heard stories about identity thefts or conspiracy theories like the CIA tapping personal information like bank accounts, phone records and not to mention the number of movies on this theme. Till recently I believed this is possible only for a high profile security agency or for an expert hacker. Only till I saw Google dashboard.
I read about Google Dashboard in a technical article two days back. It says “I already knew that I use a ton of Google services and they know a lot about me, so seeing it all in one place was more entertaining than scary”. I too didn’t expect it to be this scary. When visited the page, I felt like discovering me all over again and found out many thing which I never noticed doing before. Dashboard contain all the information about my Google account, Gmail account, Blogger account, calendar, contacts, docs, finance, social networking, latitude, search/web history, wave and the list goes on and on. Any person who can log in to my Google dashboard can easily get to know me, even more than I know about myself, like my account details , my schedule, my contacts, the documents I was working on, my financial portfolio, my friends, my location and even I do daily in the internet.

Video about Google Dashboard

I also knew that Google ‘knew’ many things about me. But seeing all of it in one location is scary. I know people who store confidential data like their bank account numbers, passwords etc in their Gmail account because they ‘know’ it’s safe and globally accessible. But, all one need is a simple password for your Google account and the consequences can be disastrous. The extra level of protection offered by Google is asking your password, one more time.
On the positive side (for Google lovers), dashboard is one big help. There is now a single place where you can manage all your Google accounts with easiness. Also, it provides a simple solution to find out what we are doing in the internet.
No matter whether you think this is a boon or a curse, it really made me think how much personal information I can safely put in the internet, if I am concerned about my privacy.
Links
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/transparency-choice-and-control-now.html
http://www.google.com/dashboard

Slow Internet!

One of my friend asked to me once, “What are the two things you don’t like about computers?” I said, “A slow computer and a slow internet connection, they really piss me off”. And the latter seems to be ‘stalking’ me all the times, no matter where I go or what technologically advanced the ISPs are.
Back when it all started, there was only one speed available - 56Kbps - the dial up. At that time, I didn’t have any choice but to wait hours and hours for a page to load, sometimes even to get connected. Even the internet café’s offered dialup or sometimes ISDN, which was not much better.
Then came the cable. The first cable connection I used had a speed of 64Kbps. It wasn’t much better either. But the best part was the fact that it was unlimited. I read somewhere that broadband means both high-speed and seamless connectivity. The cable belonged more to the ‘seamless connectivity’ category (Don’t get confused, there were lot of outages also, but as compared to the speed, there was connectivity most of the times). Still there was one problem – the download limit. I never was a cable subscriber myself, but I really hated (and still do) the idea of putting a download limit on the connection. It’s like giving something you like and telling don’t use it. (This is applicable only to power users I guess)
Fed up by all this, I promised myself that if I am ever going to take an internet connection, I’ll get the one with max speed with no download limit. That day came when I moved to Bangalore. I subscribed the 256Kbps Home ULplus plan from BSNL, which was the max speed unlimited connection offered at that time. (Most of my readers are familiar with the story of getting that one). When they came up with the 512Kbps plan, I immediately switched to it. But it doesn’t matter what speed they offered in their ads, always the speed was intermittent. I had no choice but stay with the same connection as there were no other providers in that area. I felt jealous about my friends who had Airtel connections because of their stability. They gave a constant speed (at least when I used them). Whenever I heard about the stories of connections abroad (from my friends), I wanted to experience it myself. Then again I reminded myself, I am still in India, and lucky to have a decent internet connection.
Then I moved here. And one thing I was very optimistic was that I will be able to browse as much as I want with the broadband link speed not being a bottleneck. I was proved wrong the first day itself since the place I stayed had a wireless (3G based) internet. It was worse than the one I used to have in Bangalore. I couldn’t stand it, the next week itself, I subscribed a new 3Mbps unlimited broadband (ADSL) from Singtel. They said that the first week will be a bit rough as the traffic has to adjust and some crap. But as they said, after one week, I started getting steady high speed internet. I really enjoyed using it. The internet speed never became a bottleneck for any of my normal routines. I thought that the bad days are over.
But that thought didn’t last long. For last one month, I am continuously calling my service provider’s customer care centre about the intermittent connection. I have a 3Mbps connection and sometimes it even takes up to 30+ minutes to download a 1MB file (based on the speed test suggested by the customer care executive). Sometimes I have to wait for long times even to load the google.com. Think about that. It’s not consistently slow also. And guess what, a technician came last week and did something (what he did, he didn’t reveal) and for 3 days the connection was fine. Again I have to start calling the customer care. As things currently stand, there is another technician’s visit planned for the coming weekend.
Its really pissing me off. Is it so hard to provide a consistent broadband connection? I am also familiar with the data networking and related fields and based on what I know, if you have the right equipment and if they are under the correct permitted load, it’s not that difficult to provide a good link. It’s not that they are doing a charity but I am paying the internet bills promptly every month. What would they say if I started paying the bills intermittently? I wonder sometimes, Is it just me or is every broadband consumer faces similar experiences?

CUSTOMER CARE: REALLY CARING ABOUT CUSTOMERS?

For a long time, I was thinking about coming back to blogosphere. For last couple of weeks, everyday, I include blogging as part of my daily agenda, and I never get to do it. I don’t know what kept me from coming back. Sometimes I was busy with some work, sometimes I didn’t feel like writing at all, some times, I didn’t find any subject to write about. Today morning also I decided I will write something for sure, but I was totally clueless about what until some thing happened.

I have a BSNL broadband connection (I hope most of you people know about my fights to be a BSNL broadband consumer) and it’s a 256Kbps plan. I have been thinking about changing to a 512Kbps plan. For that I needed information on how it has to be done. After a lot of thinking about whether to call the BSNL customer care, I decided to go for it. I dialed the number and here is what happened.

I was amazed that some one picked up in the first ring itself. But the worse was about to come.

Cust Care: Hello, My name is Bob, how may I assist you?
Me: Hi, My name is John Smith. I am a BSNL Broadband customer. My phone number is xxxxxx.
Cust Care: Where are you calling from?
Me: Bangalore.
Cust Care: Please hold on for a second sir. Click!

I don’t understand what they have to check when I said I am from Bangalore. Some music started playing in the background. It went on for around 3 minutes. I got angry and cut the call and tried again. After 3 tries, I got connected again.

Cust Care: Good Morning, my name is Alice. Sir your complaint is registered. Can you repeat the complaint number?
Me: What complaint? I have never registered a complaint.
Cust Care: Oh! You have not registered? Then please tell me the complaint sir, I will register it for you.
Me: I don’t have a complaint, I just need some information. I am an existing BSNL broadband customer.
Cust Care: Ok. Please tell me your name sir.
Me: John Smith
Cust Care: Where are you calling from?
Me: Bangalore, please don’t cut.
Cust Care: What is the model of your modem sir?
Me: See Miss, I don’t have a complaint; I need some information about tariffs.
Cust Care: Tell me sir, what do you want to know?
Me: My current plan is 256Kbps. I want to change it to 512Kbps plan. How can I do it?
Cust Care: You can give a written request at your exchange that you want to change it.
Me: Do I have to give it in the exchange or the customer service centre? ‘Cos that’s where I gave my initial application.
Cust Care: You can give it there also sir.
Me: How long will it take?
Cust Care: It will take one month sir, now that this month is over, if you give request, it will be changed by next month.
Me: But today is 31st only?
Cust Care: Ah, yes sir. So if you give it today, you’ll get it tomorrow, or else the next month.
Me: uh!?
Cust Care: No sir, now that the updations have been over and it may take another month.
Me: uh! Are you sure?
Cust Care: Thank you for calling us sir, have a nice day.
Me: Waaaaaaaaait! I am not finished.
Cust Care: Click!

And that’s it. The call was over. I wonder whether they are caring for the customer or some one else? I don’t know how I can explain my feeling at that time. I felt like being slapped on my face again and again besides being paying them every month and coping up with the lame replies from them when ever I call them for any support or the outages. I wonder what can be done about it. 

A Complete Browser : Flock

I've always been a fan of Internet Explorer. I recently [about 6months back] started to use Mozilla Firefox. I cannot state an exact reason why I switched to Firefox. Some pages were not properly working in IE, so I thought I will try Firefox, and thats about it. Even after I switched to Firefox, there are some times when I preferred IE itself. Even with all those cool Firefox addons, I never felt I won't survive without Firefox.

Two weeks before I read about a new browser - Flock : The Social Browser [thats what the splash screen says]. The author mentioned both cons and pros, but in the end, he stated that, now its difficult for him to live without the cool features of Flock. Thats when I thought I will also give it a try. What more to say, within days, I became a fan of Flock. I don't think I can describe all the cool features of Flock here. Let me first say, its really one of the coolest [web-related] thing I've ever seen. The main thing I liked about it is, its built using Firefox code itself. So we will inherit all the things we liked about Firefox [including security feautres] plus the Flock specific features. I had customized Firefox in my way, and I was doubtful whether the change is worth. But its more than worth, I would say.

For explaining the features, I am attaching some screenshots here, out of which one shows this blog in the Blog editor...




From the first impression, it looks so flashy, right? The effective browsing area is less though, when we use all the features, but there is option to turn them off.

In the first image you can see the original Firefox features like tabbed browsing, the same Find tool bar etc. The Foxy Tunes [lower right - music] and the PicLens [top right] are 2 addons worth mentioning here. They are originally for Firefox and I wanted to blog about them separately. The third screen is of the PicLens. It shows all the images on a web page. It is really cool for Flickr users, google image searches etc. Foxy Tunes lets you control your music player from browser.

Now to the Flock specific features. You can stay connected to almost all the 'famous' social networking sites, photo sharing site, mail accounts etc. You can see the accounts bar, where I have logged in to my gmail, yahoo, flickr, youtube, blogger, picasa and del.is.ious accounts. Then, there is a media bar on the top of the browser. In the first screen, I have chosen flickr stream based on interestingness. You can select the stream based on ratings, key words etc and it supports you tube, photo bucket etc too. There is an integrated Blog editor and Photo Uploader.

In the button bar, there are buttons to display RSS feeds, Favorites, People, Web Mail accounts, Blog Editor, Photo Uploader, Web Clipboard etc on the left panel. In the second screen you can see the integrated Blog editor, friends list on the left panel, the Fast Dial - A Firefox addon [you can call it - visual book marks] etc

Even if I wrote lot of good things, there is still space for improvement. There is no support for Orkut, which is the social networking site I prefer. There is no support of Picasa stream in the Media Bar. The integrated blog editor is almost pathetic. You cannot format the text alignment [can see in this blog - no alignment and also the buttons for alignment are missing]. Then, adding an image to the blog, its difficult. I had to use the blogger editor to add the screenshots in this blog.

So thats the cons and pros which I think are worth mentioning [which I use frequently]. Over all I give this web product 9/10 score. Now its all up to you to test it. Good Luck!

Blogged with the Flock Browser