Halloo everyone! Before I start off with my first post here on Shape of Peace, let me give you a fleeting overview about myself. Thilakof Mangalore. I’m also a full-time blogger/part-time student doing my 12th grade. This is one of my guest posts on yours truly’s blog.
Meghan and I have ridden myriad miles together and we decided to push our friendship beyond riding, so we planned up to collaboratively raise TechBuzz from the dead, a popular tech blog which started off as my hobby. The first step was to come up with a neat theme, which is tightly integrated with all popular social media sites. We used to sit up all night talk to each other, and work on design. While Meghan was designing Trip Hunter and Shape of Peace, I was working on designing TechBuzz. Meghan and Siddharth were my prime think-pots. During day time, we had our own commitments in life, like tutions and innumerable other daily chores, but as the skies went dark, we used to meet-up, discuss and head back home and work.
We used to sleep at odd times with bare minimum of 2 – 4 hours of sleep. This sounds weird coming from a lazy webmaster’s mouth, but we used to be very blissful about it. We were more creative and productive than ever, all thanks to Meghan’s stimuli.
The BSNL Tragedy:
I kept a self-imposed deadline to get things done by Diwali weekend. As luck would have it, everything was ready for launch on Diwali weekend. Meghan, Siddharth and I also had a small time launch party at CCD, Empire on 16th. After the launch party, I went home to get the balls rolling, but bad luck, BSNL’s broadband services had ran out on me. This often happens due to crappy telephone wiring, and I mend it myself at times. But this time, they had dug up right in front of my gate for some reason and left their job unfinished.
I was super-frustrated as it was Diwali weekend, which means 3 days of continuous holidays for BSNL employees. I came to a realization that the launch was delayed by 3 more days. Imagine my frustration after two weeks of sleepless productivity.
That night, I went to Meghan’s place and spent the whole night doing last minute tweaks to the TechBuzz design. I’m very thankful to Meghan for lending me his dad’s laptop and letting me leech on his WiFi. Finally, at 4 AM that morning, the theme and plugins were uploaded and put to work. Being satisfied of realizing my goals, I came back home that day and slept in peace.
My broadband connection was unstable till Tuesday. I lost all patience because internet is my bread and butter, without internet I cannot work, and I cannot pay my bills without it! I paid a visit to my telephone exchange and gave them my piece of mind. I threatened to take up the matter with consumer rights court and it worked to a certain extent, but then again the same old dialogue – “I’ve got a wife with two kids. They’ll transfer me, if you do something like that. I’m really sorry”. Finally after all the trouble, my efforts were paying off. My broadband connection came back to life that evening. But this is not the kind of customer service, I’d expect from BSNL. Those soppy words from a BSNL employee were totally unexpected and it sounded unprofessional to me.
Talking about unprofessionalism, please have a real good look at the picture below. That’s how my telephone connection is wired. It’s hanging down from a coconut tree, and sometimes the wire clips when a tall guy is trying to maneuvering his way around the wire.
So far so good, but I’m not sure when my “link lamp” (as they call it) will stop blinking. Can’t blame the tall guys though… Folks from BSNL have assured to do something about the wiring, but it’s not done yet, so let’s keep our fingers crossed and but not keep our hopes high!
BSNL has non-existent customer support. Those primates haven’t heard of 24×7 uptime or at least customer support over the weekend. They do have a toll-free number though, but calling that number is a whole new world of pain (1800-424-1600). All they do is hooking you up with your telephone exchange’s number, which perhaps you already have. If something happens over the weekend, just pray to god things normalize by Monday or Tuesday possibly. The only reason why they are still persisting is because of their connectivity. Even though Mangalore is quite a big city, other ISPs haven’t expanded their network in the city as of now.
The point behind having this small talk is to spread the word out, and get these things to somebody’s attention out there. It’s do or die for BSNL in the near future! Nonetheless, let’s hope for the best. This monopoly has to end someday. I’m not asking for 100% uptime, but I’d expect some consistency or some customer satisfaction at least.
