The disaster called Reliance Netconnect Broadband+

 This post was due a long time. When we came back to India, the most important necessity for my husband was the internet connection. So what did he do? Simply followed one of the promotional SMS that he received on his cell phone (mobile phone) and took the Reliance NetConnect Broadband + which offered up to 3GB speed. He failed to notice the ‘up to’ part and ordered the connection immediately.

What was the charge?

The modem cost was around ` 2500 and there were several monthly packs to choose from and we choose the Gold pack hoping to get the best available performance. The cost of that was ` 950 per month.

Ok with this we thought we were all set to experience the flashing internet service. Our hopes were all doomed on the very first day. The connection speed was in the order of few hundred KBPS. We thought we had made some mistake with the set up and called the customer support. (I must say here that my husband is an infrastructure management engineer in a software organizations and I must say is one among the best in his technology). We went through all the steps that he asked us to do. Finally he asked us to change the connection type to “Hybrid” and said it was going to be a home run from now and no more issues will come up.

Day 2: Still the same poor bandwidth problem. We call the customer support – that is the beauty with these products. Every time you call the cust supp, a new guy picks up the call and we have to start over from the beginning and he tries to make us do the exact same things that the prev guy did. So I told him to cut that crap and take up a complaint.

Then we fall into this typical Indian mentality of not following up with the complaint and trying to find other alternatives. So we moved the BSNL broadband modem to another place so that our laptop can connect thro wifi with that modem and forgot all about our complaint to Reliance.

Suddenly it dawns upon us that by end of this month, we were going to get the monthly bill for this dreadful service. So we call them up again and they tell us there was a problem with the tower that was serving our area and it would take at least 2 more weeks to correct the issue. The Cust supp guy agrees that our first month bill would be waived as the service was poor – but for that we had to call one day prior to our billing cycle day and tell them the whole Ramayanam again and ask them to waive the monthly charge WTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But we continued ‘trying’ to connect to this snail speed internet and at the heights of vexation called the cust supp to cancel our account. Now, we had barely used the service for 20 days and Guess what? they refused to return the cost of the modem ` 2500 – Mukhesh bhai’s crocodile mouth account had already swallowed it.

At the end of this debacle, we are left with a useless piece of junk and a loss of ` 2500.

But I would not condemn the product as a whole because after this bad experience we talked to few others who were using Reliance NetConnect Broadband + (in other areas) and some of them were contented with the service and bandwidth they were receiving

My advice to anyone considering Reliance NetConnect Broadband+ is – first talk to friends who use the service in your area. Take their feedback seriously and then buy this product because if you ever want to cancel the account you will not receive the cost of the modem back.