Pathetic condition of Tata Docomo Customer Care

By this time, You must be knowing that I'm among the new Tata Docomo users in Bangalore and how much I'm annoyed and frustrated by the dismal performance of the network. For the details of the trauma I'm going through due to this, check this out.

Whenever you face any problem with the service for which you are paying, you try to do a little troubleshooting yourself. But what do you do when everything fails? You call up the Customer Care. The nice guys at the other end of the call talks you through the issue and its solution or register a complain. But then again, what do you do when you are unable to reach the Customer Care as well....?? Total frustration.

Apart from all other problems, the inability to reach the Customer Care [CC] is what irritates me most. Call to the CC number 121 behaves very weirdly all the time. Over time, Over this week, I've come across these -

• Happens 50% of times : Probably docomo is the only telephone network on which you get "The subscriber you've dialed, cannot be connected for the moment. Please redial later. The route is busy" on calling the CC number.
• Happens 20% of times : The call goes through, I'm told "You're with Tata Docomo" and abruptly the call gets disconnected. As if I didn't know before calling the CC.
• Happens 20% of times : The call goes through, I'm told "You're with Tata Docomo" and then I'm told "The subscriber you've dialed, cannot be connected for the moment....." Wha.....t..!!! Midway through the call, I'm told call can't be connected!!!
• Happens 3% of times : It's my lucky day. None of the above happens and I get the IVR menu. I press '9' to talk to a CC representative. And, bang. The call gets disconnected. Dude, they just don't want us to press '9'.
• Happens 5% of times : On a more lucky day, the call is still in place. I get the Docomo jingle tune. I think "Ahh, finally I'll get to talk to someone. FINALLY". Then the weirdest thing in the history of telephone happens. I get the 'call being connected' tone [tuut...tuut...tuut...],'call ringing' tone [trrrring...trrrring] and "The subscriber you've dialed, cannot be reached" all at the same time. On that very call. WTF...!!
• Happens 1.5% of times : After pressing '9', you keep hearing the Docomo jingle tune, repeatedly. Again, and again, and again, and AGAIN. Till you get frustrated and end the call yourself.
• Happens 0.49% of times : Only today I experience this new thing. After the Docomo jingle, I'm told "All our CC representatives are busy on another call. Please call later". Not the exact words, as I don't remember them exactly and reaching this far itself is very very VERY difficult. You'll get this far at most once after trying for full 2 days. I'm not even asked "please be on line", forget "Your call is important to us" and the call is disconnected.
• Happens 0.01% of times : The call goes through and someone on the other side of the call greets "Hi, I'm blah-blah-blah. how may I assist you". I'm at loss of words and reactions. Should I thank him/her endlessly for finally picking up my call or scream my lungs out for their crappy service?

Well, my call was answered by CC representative this morning, for the 1st time in 7 days. I had to randomly endure the various stages mentioned above. Finally, while braving the 6th torture for 6 minutes, the jingle [read, the torture] stopped and I heard the melodious "Hi, I'm blah-blah-blah. how may I assist you".


That was this morning. After that, I've tried several times and again in the loop of 1st 7 tortures. Seems my luck will shine upon me only next Friday now. Guess that's in sync with their 1Paisa/sec policy. "Talk to Customer Care Representative 1 time/Week".


If you're using the Tata Docomo network and would like to share your opinion, please take this survey.



TAKE THIS SURVEY
Survey results so far :
Publishing the Survey results so far. [15th Aug 09]. Sadly, PollDaddy doesn't provide easier way of publishing survey reports. So, had to take 3 screen-shots of the Survey Data page, crop and combine them to get the result page I posted below.


In a nutshell, it looks like subscribers aren't happy with Docomo's quality of service. I got 4 respondents who ranked Docomo worst in all my questions. 4/19. i.e. 20% totally pissed off customer. Not a good sign. Compared to that, I got only 1 person who gave it #1 on call categories.


I'm publishing the Comments that some of these respondents left in the survey. Check the comment page below for that.