How a salesman can ruin a company!

While a company depends on its sales force (whether in field or in office) to help it gain more clients and launch new services, a salesman/team can also not only disrepute a company but also cause it and its clients, great loss, by their foolish act and selfish act.

Sadly, I am in the middle of such a scenario as a customer and on the other side is MTNL, a telephone and internet services PSU, I have been using as my primary internet provider for past several years!

All this began with a phone call last week from a supposedly MTNL telemarketer, calling into see whether or not I wanted to switch from our existing 999 Combo Plan (1mbps unlimited access, 200 free phone calls and no FUP) to their new “Freedom1295” Plan (2mbps till 30GB, 512kbps thereafter).

The burping telemarketer (yes, he burped multiple times during the call) tried to sell the plan in between the burps, which I promptly declined, since I am happy with my current plan.

However, yesterday I got a call from MTNL, telling me that the plan change I had requested had been implemented! When I said I had never requested any plan change, the person on the other line blurted something about internet and disconnected the call! Shortly thereafter, my internet connection stopped working and I had to lodge a complaint, which was promptly answered by our usual linesman, who couldn’t resolve the login issue and told me that he would get this rectified immediately.

I informed him about both the earlier calls, which he later confirmed with me over the phone, since the reason internet had stopped working was due to the fact that MTNL had indeed changed my internet plan (that too during the month, which is against their own policies) and thus port needed to be reassigned. Once again I told him that this plan change wasn’t requested by me and I need my old plan back and was informed, he would do what he can.

Soon thereafter my internet connection started working and I was able to get back online, after suffering a downtime of around 6 hours!

Then in the evening, everything seemed to grind to a halt and this was due to the fact that MTNL’s FUP had kicked in restricting my connection to 512kbps! On the account page I could see that my plan had been changed to Freedom1295, which that burping salesman of MTNL had tried to sell to me last week, to which I had disagreed!

When I called up MTNL’s Customer Service today, they too were not only taken aback by the fact that the plan had been changed without any request, but that too in the middle of the month, which is against their own stated policy!

Not only this, in front of plan change request, test was written instead of name!

Guess Mr. Burpalot wanted to either test how plan change works and did that by using our connection as a guinea pig or worse still, did it knowingly to either meet his targets or make a few extra bucks as commission!

Which now leaves me and MTNL at loggerheads and although I have been assured that I would get a call back from them by 2:30pm today, I am not really all that certain. What I am certain about, is the fact that I will not pay a single Rupee to them, unless and until my plan is changed back instantaneously and we aren’t charged any extra money for the plan we never wanted!

Of course all this is going to waste not only my precious time, resources and mental peace, but also that of MTNL support staff and officials. And I am willing to go to consumer court for this and forfeit a phone connection we have been using for over one and a half decade and an internet connection we have been using for past 6-7 years!

All this because of Mr. Burpalot, the MTNL salesman!

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11 Comments

  1. KK September 30, 2011
  2. Yogesh Sarkar September 30, 2011
  3. abraham October 1, 2011
  4. Yogesh Sarkar October 1, 2011
  5. abraham October 3, 2011
  6. Yogesh Sarkar October 3, 2011
  7. Harjeev October 3, 2011
  8. Yogesh Sarkar October 3, 2011
  9. Yogesh Sarkar October 3, 2011
  10. abraham October 5, 2011
  11. Yogesh Sarkar October 5, 2011

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