Airtel Customer Service

I have been using Airtel from the day I got my own cell phone. That should be 5 years now, I guess. Yeah.
Though I have always appreciated their service in NCR, which is the reason i still stick to them. You know at the end of day, all you need is a decent strength of those waves so that you can make and take calls anywhere and anytime. Nevertheless, Airtel's customer service still sucks big time. I remember the first SIM I got was with my cell phone. There was an offer at that time, where you used to get a free connection for purchasing Nokia cell phones. Anyways, the story goes like this. After I got the SIM activated, I realized that no one from a landline phone was able to call me! Strange and f***ing irritating. What was the point of me having the cell, when not even my mother can call me from our landline! I dialed 121 and they told me that there must be some problem with my cell! WTF, tell that to someone who is pulling a rickshaw and he may be fooled by this shit response! I on the other hand being a technology follower and obviously a Computer Science student was not willing to be tricked by such comments. I told the guy that it's impossible that something like that can happen due to my device. May be that guy was not having his manual something like this. So, I will not blame him or mince bad words to him. Instead, I have sympathy to him as how he must be thinking that I might be cursing him as soon as I disconnected the call :D. So anyways, even after 3 more calls with different executives my problem remain unsolved and mom still had to call on Nitin's cell :( I got a new number. Again Airtel. I remember the reason behind deciding for Airtel again. Nitin was the first one of us to get a cell and he was having an Idea connection. Idea had some problems with the network in those days at times, when we were in LT or hostel, sometimes the signal will just die! So I went again for Airtel.
Time and again I had to call customer support 2-3 times for different reasons. i don't remember any such instance which can be such gross! But yes, I was always cribbing about their customer service due to one or another reason.

Last year, when I was in States, I forgot paying bill for one month and those freaks deactivated my cell :( I wrote many mails and asked for clarifications about why this was done, when my pending amount was far less than 1200 (which was set for my account). The height of all this was that they were expecting me to pay the pending bill which was somewhere near 300 and they had already deactivated my number for no good. i penned down a long mail to the nodal office asking me how and why about this and letting him know that I am not at all going to pay up the pending amount unless my number is activated again. I even warned him that i might see customer court in this regard :P That guy wrote back to me saying that it's no possible for him to re-activate the number but I need not pay the pending amount :D. At least, I got the due cleared off my shelf.

this year, back in Feb, when I reached India, i again got Airtel. Last month, I called 121 and asked them to activate international roaming on my cell to which the lady on the other side replied that I need to shell out 6K as security deposit! I told her politely that I am having corporate connection and I am damn sure that I need not pay any security as last year also, I had paid nothing for activation. But she insisted that I will have to pay up, other wise no international roaming for me. Go to Hell is what I mumbled in my mind and thanked her for her generosity :) I sat down and typed a mail to 121 asking to activate international roaming on my cell. The very next day, I got reply that this has been activated on my cell, no security deposits asked! I was like, dude why can't the people on phone know this! Are there different manuals for people who are attending calls and those who are responding to mails? If that is the case then of course it sucks!

Till this day customer service is not Airtel's forte!

Throw shoe at opponent parties and win Cash!

A new game will soon take its toll over cricket in these election times in India. The game is Shoe Throw.
Political parties in India, are already in a frenzy for proving which party is composed of most rude, illiterate, criminal candidates and which party will do something which will make it to headlines for all wrong reasons. We have seen, Varun Gandhi, who looked like a decent fellow to me till he gave that mindless statement in Pilibhit. I am still in a fix as to whether that was a political stunt to gain political mileage (which at this point seems very much logical) or this is what Varun's ideology has always been and its only that it came out in recent past.
Today, one of the journalist did what an Iraqi journalist did to Bush! Delhi based journalist, Jarnail Singh, hurled a shoe at incumbent cabinet minister, P Chidambaram. You know what was most unfortunate outcome of this incident? Shiromani Akali Dal, a biggie in Punjab politics announcing a cash reward for INR 2,00,000 to Jarnail for his "courage & bravery. What irks me most is the mindset and ideology of the people behind this pity thought! How and Why are such people in power, making laws for us when they don't deserve to even hold a post in a city municipal corporation? No wonder, in future they can pass laws making it legitimate to throw shoes on others, if you are unhappy with something!
God help India!

Google India Elections Center Bug!

Information Technology played a key role in recently held Presidential elections in USA. Democrats had a technically suave team which harnessed every IT medium possible!
Some political parties here in India are trying to follow this path this time for General elections. I have come across ads from BJP promoting its Primer Minister candidate L K Advani! If you are in India, you must have seen the ads for his website in Google ads on various websites or would have received an SMS for the same website!
Today, I was going through Google Blog and came across a post that Google has released Google India Elections Center in partnership with HT Media! Thanks to Google and HT Media for this as the site has good features where in you can know about your constituency, the incumbent MP and latest news going around in political circuit.
What prompted me to write this blog was one bug which I saw on the site. The Member Parliament 2004 widget actually shows the incumbent MPs from your constituency and adjoining ones. When I was searching for nothing in particular but just browsing through, I stumbled upon an MP from Arrah, Bihar, Mrs Kanti Singh. I know her name, at least I know that she is a female! The widget shows her incorrectly as a Male!

I know the widget search is powered by a third party service provider but Google is hosting the site so it can affect its credibility! Google India, please step up and get it corrected through the service provider!

Satyam and the corporate scam!

B. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of Satyam Computer Serveces has admitted today of huge accounting frauds in Satyam. In a letter addressed to the board of directors, he admits that the accounting books were inflated to show higher operating income and profits than the actual. He admits that, what started as a minor gap between actual and shown, the gap consistently widened as the company grew and now it has become unmanageable! NY Times article can be found here.
This revelation comes at a time, when Indian IT industry is already facing heat of the global slowdown. Now, in light of this revelation, it can have negative repercussion on the Indian IT industry as a whole as the customers, esp those coming from a financial domain. will rethink and will investigate in the innards of the outsourcing provider before committing on a deal. This will and should also spark an investigation and overhaul of corporate governance and accounting practices at other Indian IT giants.
B.Ramalinga Raju has resigned from his post, which is mentioned in the same letter. Infosys founder, Narayan Murthy has lamented on this situation and has attributed failure of governance to this sad situation. He has always been an advocate of corporate governance.

Satyam was already under close scrutiny after it was banned by World Bank from all future contracts last October after World Bank found that spy software was installed on some desktops in its Washington headquarters.

Updates
On Bloomberg
On Wall Street Journal

India's Union Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath has commented that Indian Government will not take over Satyam. His comments can be found here. Securities and Exchange board of Indian (SEBI) also said that it was horrified after the findings and is in touch with Ministry of Corporate Affairs for coordinated action. NASSCOM also commented that this is failure of corporate governance.
The apex chartered accountants’ body ICAI will seek an immediate explanation from Satyam Computer’s auditors, PriceWaterHouse Cooper (PwC), on the financial fraud unearthed by the software company’s chairman B Ramalinga Raju, before taking any action.