Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

September 6, 2009

Airtel Delhi’s underhand billing tactics

Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 9:15 PM

I have an Airtel broadband connection at home with the 1 Mbps unlimited plan for which I pay Rs 2222 (plus taxes) per month and I was pretty happy with it. Today while taking to a friend I discovered that Airtel had reduced the price for the 1 Mbps plan to 1699 4 months ago but have still continued to charge me at the same cost.

So I called up the Airtel support center, got their billing department and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Looking at your plans online I see that the cost for a 1 Mbps connection is Rs 1699, is that true?
Rep: Yes
Me: Ok, then how come I am being charged Rs 2222 for the same plan?
Rep: Hold on. (About 30 secs later) you are being charged for the Freedom 2999 plan which gives you 2 Mbps speed
Me: I know I don’t get 2 Mbps speed.
Rep: Let em check your plan again. Yes you are on the Unlimited 2222 plan which gives you 1Mbps connection
Me: Ok, so why have you been charging me 2222 when the plan is 1699?
Rep: Your plan was set a while ago thats why…
Me: I know my plan was set a while ago, about 2 years ago. Whats your point?
Rep: You didn’t give us any notification that you wanted to switch to a new plan.
Me: How am I supposed to know that the costs have changed?
Rep: The new plans were listed on the Airtel website.
Me: So your customers are supposed to check your site every few days to make sure that they are not being over charged?
Rep: The plans were also advertised via phone and email.
Me: I haven’t received any calls/emails from you regarding the change.
Rep: You must be on the Do not Call list, hence you didn’t get the call
Me: Ok, so why do I keep getting calls from you on my landline to buy ringtones but didn’t get a call about this?
Rep: Some random explanation…
Me: Ok, switch me to the new plan.
Rep: Can’t do that you will have to go for the 2 Mbps plan at Rs. 2999.
Me: What nonsense? I don’t want a 2 Mbps connection. I want a 1 Mbps connection. Why can’t you switch me to the new plan?
Rep: Let me check if thats possible. Can I put you on hold?

Rep: Ok, I will put in a request for your plan to be migrated to the new plan. Will be done in 3-4 days.
Me: Ok, now when was this new plan launched?
Rep: About 4 months ago.
Me: Fine, I need a refund for the extra amount that you have been charging me for the past 4 months.
Rep: Sorry that won’t be possible as you didn’t change your plan.
Me: Ok, explain to me the difference between the plan I have and the new plan you launched?
Rep: There is no difference.
Me: So why would I pay Rs 700 more for the same plan?
Rep: This plan gives you 100 Rs free calls also…
Me: Ok, so you still need to refund me 600 Rs..
Rep: Can’t commit that the amount will be refund.
Me: Why?
Rep: Because you didn’t change your plan.

Me: Who approves the refund?
Rep: The Billing department
Me: And you are in the Billing department correct?
Rep: Yes.
Me: So whats the problem approving the refund?
Rep: Because you didn’t change your plan.
Me: Please put in a request to change my plan and another request to refund my money.
Rep: Ok, here’s your request no: xxxxxxx
Me: What about the refund?
Rep: Thats also in the same request, but I can’t commit that the refund will be given.
Me: Ok, how will I know that the plan is changed?
Rep: You will get a confirmation call when its changed
Me: What about the refund?
Rep: If the request is approved then you will see the refund in your next bill otherwise you won’t.
Me: Fine. By when can I expect a response?
Rep: 3-4 business days
Me: Ok. Thanks.
———-

The stuff that irritated be about the call above was:

1. He lied to me about my plan to keep me on the same plan
2. He tried to tell me that I couldn’t switch to a lower cost plan with the same data transfer rate
3. They are refusing to refund the amount that they over charged.

So now I am going to wait for 4 days, if I don’t get a refund from them I will be lodging a complaint with the consumer court.

I think I will also email this to the customer care department. Lets see what they have to say.

– Suramya

September 5, 2009

Went to Hardrock Cafe

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 8:33 PM

Went to Hardrock Cafe with Friends last Thursday. This was the first time I had been to Hardrock in India so it was fun. We weren’t really sure of the way to the cafe but we managed to get there thanks to directions given by Anand.

There was a live band playing that night and it was a decent band. I would tell you what the band was called but I have forgotten the name, though I do remember that it was from Bangalore and had a very non-sensicle name. I did take pics but they are on Ruth’s camera so I can’t post them till she sends them to me. (Which she was supposed to do 2 days ago…)

The other ‘gift’ I got from the night out is a bad cold… Thanks Ruth. :p

By the time we got out it was 11:30 and raining heavily so I was worried that the roads might get flooded but thankfully we got home without having to swim.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

August 29, 2009

My Trip to Shimla

Filed under: My Life,Travel/Trips — Suramya @ 11:30 PM

Last week me, Gaurang and Kunal went for a trip to Shimla with Kunal’s Mausa (Mom’s sister’s husband). We had planned on leaving by 6 – 6:30 am on Thursday so I left from Noida at 5:20 am and drove to Gurgoan in my trusty on Maruti 800. (For those of you who don’t know, this car is about 25 years old with no AC). Got there in about an hour and we left from there at 6:35 am.

The road out of Delhi was thankfully not very crowded and even though we all were not really sure where to go but rather had a general idea of the route we made good time and made it past Karnal in about 3 hours. We stopped at a dhabba (Roadside Restaurant) a few miles past that and had breakfast. This set the trend for the rest of the trip which was more of a ‘Foods of India’ than a road trip. By this I mean that we ate and ate ate throughout the trip.

The trip to Shimla took us 10 hours because of the Traffic after Chandigarh and the curvy roads near Shimla so we finally reached there at 4:30 pm. After we got there we rested for a while at Mausa’s place (They stay in Shimla) and then drove back to main Shimla (They stay in New Shimla) and spent a couple of hours walking around on Mall Road. Most of the shops there closed up at 9pm so we were back home by 10 and were off to bed by 11pm.

The next day we got up by 7 and lazed around for a while, then came down for a huge breakfast. After which we relaxed till Mahak (Mausa’s Daughter) came back from School and then went back to Mall Road. Spent pretty much the entire day there and enjoyed the view, food and crowds.

On Sat we decided to drive to Kufri with Mausi and Mahak. On the way there we changed our minds to go to the Hot water springs instead. However when we came to the junction where we had to turn for the springs we saw that the springs were 58 Kms from that point so we went to Kufri instead which was only 7 kms. There wasn’t a lot to see there except the view and horses. Oh, and we also saw a Himalayan Yak there near the parking area. Since there wasn’t a lot to see there we decided that we would make the trip to the hot water springs to check them out.

If you think hilly roads are painful, try traveling on them with three people who get motion sick; one of whom is a 5 year old girl. We were pretty much stopping about every 15 mins because someone or other felt like they were about to throw up. We made it half-way to the springs before we gave up and stopped at Naldhera instead. Spent about an hour over there drinking tea and relaxing in the sun before we drove back.

Once we got back to Shimla we went back to Mall Road again and spent the rest of the day relaxing/walking about over there (plus all the streets/area’s above and below the mall road)

Got back home and crashed, then left home on Sunday morning at 10:30 am after a huge breakfast and got back to Delhi in 8 1/2 hours. Had dinner and Gaurang’s place and crashed. Drove back to Noida on Monday at 6 am so as to avoid the traffic.

In all it was a great trip, very relaxing and very filling. Both Mausi and Mausa fed us like anything but I enjoyed a lot. Hope to do something like this again soon.

Edit (30th Aug 2009): The photos from the trip have been uploaded to Photogallery under Trips -> Shimla Trip (Aug 2009)

– Suramya

August 16, 2009

Software/OS Irritations

Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 2:20 AM

Today I reinstalled Windows XP on my system because Vinit/Surabhi needed a XP PC for some work. I had it installed till yesterday but it was giving me issues (I had tried to boot to it from within VMWare) so I formatted the partition yesterday night. Install was ok, Most of my hardware wasn’t detected as I need to download and install the drivers for them, but the mouse, keyboard and the screen work which is good enough for what I need it for. I still have to install all the updates and patches etc.

The annoying thing was that the stupid installer overwrote the Bootloader so I couldn’t boot into Linux anymore. I had to boot to Linux using a Live Linux CD and reinstall the grub boot manager. To do it all I had to do was run 3 commands. Now my system is back to normal. 🙂

I am going to look into a creating Windows Live CD. I have read about it on the web. Lets see if I can actually find it and get it to work.

The other thing I was trying to get to work was syncing my Phone Contacts/Calender with my computer/Google. I managed to back up the contacts and calender as files but the sync to Google didn’t work. I guess it might be that I was too impatient and canceled the sync after 5 mins but I don’t know… Will try it again tomorrow. Or I guess I will just install Horde on my system and sync to its LDAP server. That way I will be able to manage/access them using thunderbird. I will just have to see what I feel like tomorrow when I actually start playing with it again.

I installed Opera today on my system, because I needed another browser for streaming music via a proxy. I didn’t want to use firefox because I don’t want all my traffic to go though the proxy. My feelings about the browser can be summed up by two words: It sucks.

The flash file upload at mediafire froze the browser. Then I tried to configure the browser to use a SOCKS proxy and was really surprised to find that Opera doesn’t have support for it. Even IE has support for it… (I think) Not near a windows message so can’t check it. So I am back to using Firefox for everything and will uninstall Opera shortly.

Having said all of that, Opera Mobile is really good. It works for what I need it for. So until Mozilla releases a browser for the mobile I will be using Opera on my phone.

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

August 11, 2009

Blah blah about my life.

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:21 PM

As I said in my last post Rakhi was last week and it was fun. Lots of relatives came over to our place and we all really enjoyed. I was planning on posting some of the photos taken then but the cable that connects my camera to the computer has gone MIA (Missing In Action) and the card reader that I have is not working any more… 🙁 So till I get one or the other working you will have to wait for the photos.

I finally transferred my games and pics from my old phone to the current one. I thought I had copied everything using the Nokia Sync but that didn’t copy any of the extra stuff I had installed manually. So first I copied all of it to the memory card and tried copying it to the computer. Unfortunately that didn’t work because the reader was broken. Then I realized that I could talk to the phone using bluetooth, so copied about 40 MB of applications/games to the N95. Yay Me..

The new wireless AP is working great as it gives me wireless access throughout the house instead of just 1/2 of it.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

August 4, 2009

General Update on Life

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:24 PM

On the 26th of June I attended Arundhati’s wedding in Gurguan. It was a nice wedding. Really quite. Not like the usual wedding you see up here in the north with the loud music and fire crackers etc. I guess it makes sense as both of them are Bengali’s. Got to meet with a few friends while we were there so that was good. Lately it seems like we all only meet when there’s a wedding or something going on. I guess I should plan a get together or something.

Over the last few weeks the Electricity department here has been digging holes in the ground so that all the overhead power lines here in Sector 44 will be moved underground. They are using a mole machine for it (Don’t know the official name so calling it that). What this does is that they dig a hole at one place and point this machine to where they want it to go and it digs a tunnel underground till it reaches the destination. Which sounds really good in theory but the implimentation sucks as usual.

So far they have managed to cut the Phone lines (Airtel and Reliance) for 1/2 the sector, cut a water pipe in half, mess up other wires. The water pipe was cut right in front of our house so the street in front of the house was completely flooded and they had to cut the water supply for the sector while they repaired it, which took almost 2 days. For the phone lines both Airtel and Reliance have laid down temporary cables and got the phones running. Thankfully our Airtel line wasn’t affected and my net connection still works.

Speaking of the net connection, I had Airtel take a look at it because for some reason my modem was dropping 7-15% of the incoming packets which meant that I couldn’t download a large file or stay connected to FTP/SSH for more than 5-10 mins at a time. They replaced the modem and the phone cable and so far it works great.

Needed to do some work over wireless on my phone so I set up the spare wireless router I had sitting in the closet as a wireless AP, now I get a full wireless signal in most of the house. Earlier I barely got a signal in my room.

What else have I been upto? hmm.. nothing too exciting, just general life.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later. Tomorrow is Rakhi so I have to go sleep early today.

– Suramya

July 25, 2009

1st Mountain Dew Commercial

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 10:21 PM

Check out this really old commercial for Mountain Dew: 1st Mountain Dew Commercial with Willie the Hillbilly

I love this drink. Pretty funny advertisement too..

– Suramya

July 23, 2009

Celebrated Mom’s Birthday today

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

It was mon’s birthday today so me and dad decided to get cake in the morning when coming back from a doctors appointment. Unfortunately we were too early so the shop was closed. The drive was fun, I got to enjoy the heat and the humidity as the AC in the Esteem wasn’t working; actually it does work but only when you drive at more than 50 km/h, which thanks to the traffic we weren’t able to do a lot…

So we got home without the cake, which was a good thing because mom didn’t want to have cake. She wanted to have Ghavar (Its an Indian sweet) so I will be getting that for her tomorrow. In the evening we were planning on going for Mexican food but that also was postponed to later because it was raining and mom had the craving for Garlic bread. So we then ordered food from Papa John’s with lots of extra garlic sticks. Now I am full and we still have 1/2 a pizza left along with some garlic bread. I guess no vampires are going to be coming near us anytime soon.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

July 21, 2009

Blah…

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

Yeah, I know… Its not the most imaginative headings… but that’s pretty much how I was feeling when I got back home today. Had to go do bank stuff and taxes stuff today and it was hot outside (again) and humidity must have been more than 80%. Plus I am tired of listening to the same songs in the car. I need to buy an FM transmitter that I can use with my phone so I can play new music in the car without having to burn CD’s.

To top it all I am taking some antibiotics (Nothing serious, Just trying to prevent my nose looking like a clown nose by turning all red and itchy.) and they make my head spin. So while I am typing this, I am also trying really hard not to throw up. This effect lasts for about 2-3 hours so I usually try to take them just before going to sleep. Today mom made me take them early hence the fun 🙁

A friend of mine is in Canada and their house is right next to the bush fire that has been going on over there. They have been put on evacuation watch. The fire closest to them is literally a few miles away and all it would take is a gust of wind for it to spread. Imagine having to pack up your whole life in a car. That’s what she is doing right now, because that’s all they will be able to take with them if they have to evacuate.

I am hoping for the best. But lets see. Send all your good thoughts towards her and the other people trying to survive the fire.

Surabhi’s laptop is still having issues. Installed a temperature monitor on it. Looks like the fan/cooling is not working properly and the system shuts down when the CPU temp gets near 100 deg C. So this means I have to take it back to the IBM service center and get it fixed. 🙁

Well this is all for now. Will write more later when I can think straight again.

– Suramya

July 19, 2009

Dinner with Relatives and other stuff

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:07 PM

Me, Mom and Dad went to visit Rakhi didi today. It had been a while since I visited them so it was great. We stayed over for dinner and as usual she cooked a lot and the food was great.

Spent some quality time with my niece and got to spoil her. 🙂 Other than that the day was pretty normal. Hot as hell but normal.

Surabhi’s laptop is acting up again so trying to diagnose it. Looks like the shutdowns were because of heating issues. Installed a temperature monitor to log the CPU temperature and correlate that with the shutdowns… Plus in my opinion she needs to format the system because it has gotten really slow. (Opening a new explorer window or folder takes more than 5 seconds… )

Need to get up early tomorrow to do stuff and I am really not looking forward to it. 🙁

I guess I should sleep now… just soon as I finish this, oh and I should do that also… plus this… Ah well I guess I will be sleeping at the usual time. I can function without a lot of sleep for a while.

– Suramya

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