Telecom firms cheating Customers

INDIA IS a place where one time business can give huge return in profit, therefore, we see emergence of a large number of babaa (fake saint), pakhandi gurua (religious charlatan) and other impostors who successfully run business of several crore of rupees. This is because of the presence of a very big market of all time in each sector as well as concerned authorities are corrupted.

Telecom sector also enjoys a potential market in India where a large number of customers are available at all time to be tapped and cheated. So, private players in mobile telecommunication never shy from emerging as impostors for latest news, horoscope, health tips, vaastu tips, humorous jokes, ringtones, new music releases and many other subjects on which even experts' opinion could not give us guarantee of success. Nobody knows whether these mobile companies employ experts or randomly pass general views/tips applicable in a subject.

Customers may not benefit from these tips but, private mobile operators definitely make a huge profit everyday. As the market in telecom sector is enormously large and operators are less than ten on national level, even if a few per cent of customers are cheated for some duration, profit of several crore rupees can be easily made.

Even a big and leading telecom firm also doesn’t shy away from running this cheat-business and latest endeavour by the telecommunication firm is to send unsolicited cricket alerts to its customers for which the firm deduces subscription charges without permission of the customers.

Nowadays, cricket alert is found activated on each mobile number of every mobile connection without any request and permission from customers. Though it seems these cricket alerts are like spams, the telecom operator does deduce good amount for such unsolicited alerts/news at a rate of Rs 30 per month or sometimes rupees three per day.

In a month, a customer is robbed of Rs 30 to Rs 90 from his/her balance without his/her permission and the private firm makes a profit of not less than crore rupees by tapping customers throughout the country. Since, its time of Indian Premier League season in cricket which will continue for two months, customers seem to have no respite from being cheated and robbed of huge amount from their balance by the mobile telecom players, who will continue to pose as impostors of cricket alerts despite customers watch matches and results live on TV sets or have live scores on Internet.

Moreover, the shocking part of this cheat-business is that these mobile operators send alerts only after update of news/score results in their offices on delay by half-an-hour time or more when we have already watched the match and scores even sitting at a far remote village on our TV sets.

This cheat-business of telecommunication sector is so safely running that a customer could not protect himself or herself and could not protest or even complain. There is no option/condition mentioned in cricket alerts that a customer can select to stop the unsolicited messages. The repeated calls to the customer-care are unattended and rejected on condition of line-congestion. Even sending messages successfully and repeatedly to customer-care at 121 does not result in putting an end to the unsolicited alerts. If one search on any mobile company's site for option/reply to customer care for stopping the unnecessary alerts, the repeated requests to customer-care is unheeded and not replied deliberately by customer-care. The only thing which work in twisting ears of customer-care is to complain with Indian Consumer Complaints Forum. Then customer-care of the concerned mobile firm will act and start automatic reply to customers' messages which should be in code only like ‘STOP SPO’ or ‘STOP’ or ‘STOP NEWS’ to 121. However, this is not the end of ordeal to the customer. The customer-care starts harassing the customer by repeatedly sending automatically generated messages asking for ‘STOP’ message on conditions that the message is not received or there is no reply from customer to deactivation procedure despite the customer complies for hours. Even after message of deactivation of cricket alerts or any other tips/news arrives in customer's mobile on several attempts/replies, customer-care will continue sending those alerts repeatedly and deliberately to harass the customer further. It seems according to customer-care and mobile companies, there is no other work of customer than replying to customer-care and customer should continue wasting his/her time and energy.

More or less, the entire episode of cheat-business of the private mobile companies is conspicuously pre-designed. It is well known that staffs in customer-care and executives of private mobile companies have obligation to increase the profit of the company by any means and at any cost. Intentionally, tips/news alerts are activated on customers' mobile for a duration and then large amount is deduced on a regular basis from the balance of a customer. In today's busy life, at first, customer does not pay much attention to such infringement/theft and thinks the amount from balance is deduced for phone calls. Later on, the customer realises deduction of amount on regular basis for unsolicited and unnecessary services.

When a customer contacts the customer-care, the customer-care does not pay any attention deliberately and avoid calls from the customer since the customer is enlisted target/victim in the region of customer-care.

For a long period, calls and concerns of such customers are ignored by customer-care until some measures are taken by aware customers through consumer forum. By the mean time, a huge theft is done to customer's balance by the mobile company of which customer is using service. There is no option to get back the deduced amount to the customer's balance as the customer-care continues to ignore calls/concerns from customers repeatedly and deliberately.

India is a market where any business, scheme or programme can succeed since there is a lack of tough measures and supervision to stop theft, robbery and cheating by impostors in any form.
Mechanism from government side to check these cheat-businesses are poor and suffers from many loop-holes where customers find themselves in a situation that they could not give up their regular works and run after settling issues of small amount as conviction of private mobile companies and harsh punishment is rare and not at all.

Already there are millions of cases pending in our courts, and with each passing day the number of such cases is on the rise. Hundreds of complaints are registered everyday with Indian Consumer Complaints Forum regarding such thefts and very few of those issues are settled. Nevertheless, no tough measures and mechanisms are evolved by various departments and authorities of our government.

When registered mobile operators can run such practices business regularly throughout the country, could we the people of India expect relief from religious charlatans and other impostors? Could we anticipate serious actions and measures from our government?