telenor post paid issue

[Yousuf Jawwad]

Subject: telenor: cleaning the dirty laundry (in public)

AA All,

The biggest lesson i probably learnt in life is that if you want a
certain relation to work, you dont clean the dirty laundry in public.
Quite frankly speaking, in this case, telenor has pushed me in a
corner and i am left with no choice but to shout.

The reason for selecting these forums is because

quite a few big names in the telcomm industry are found on these forums.
after 4 months of dealing with customer relationship officers at
telenor i am tired.
i dont feel that i am being treated fairly.
i want to talk to somebody who is responsible for dealing with such issues.

Enough of the prefece, let the show begin.

I switched to telenor (postpaid) from another mobile operator back in
july 2008. The major reasons for chosing telenor as a service provider
despite not having the best call rates was

1. the claimed to have the best network quality in pakistan
2. the only service provider that works on my farms and i wanted to be
connected when on visits to my farm.

Now the events

Event 1:

I started facing the problem back in august 2008. My services are were
restricted to reach of credit limit (90%) and i immediatly paid the
bill on 17th august. It took my service provider 4 to 5 days to get
the services to be restored back to normal. Being associated to
telecomm market, i knew sometimes system misbehave and let it go. but
4 to 5 days and i was not being provided services was not a very good
sign of the things to come.

Event 2:

The same thing happened on 9th or 10th september but it took 36 hours
for the services to be restored. but still 36 hours is not a very good
downtime?

Event 3:

Same problem, same resolution time, the date this time was 22th
september. The worst part, i have to call the customer services to get
the problem escalated every time

Event 4:

Same problem, but the resolution time was about 60 hours. Date: 29th
October. Why again i had to call the customer services to get the
problem resolved? plus whats the point of active data service when
there is no voice? i believe the primary service is voice not data?
isnt data service provided as an add-on to add value to the brand? or
am i being ill informed? i don't know something is seriously wrong?

Event 5:

Date is 9th November, but the resolution time is again around 55
hours. The worst part, the people who were trying to call me were
getting the message "the number you are trying is out of reach".

Event 6:
Today, and is on going ....

Lies I have been told since august ..

1. Sir, the system is being upgraded.
-> What kind of an upgrade takes four months to upgrade the system.
Correct me if i am wrong but all the upgrade activities are done at
off-peak hours on live systems regardless of telecoms or internet. Who
does system upgrades at 1'o'clock? either i am being told a lie or can
i accuse telenor of mal-practicing? Telenor representatives can choose
any of it on their convenience.

My good friends in telecom sector questioned my intelligence when i
called the people responsible for handling telenor billing unqualified
thickhead morons by throwing sentences like "dude, i thought you knew
the difference between systems fault and persons fault." Now call me
an idiot, but one simple question i would throw at the people
responsible "what would you call the fault that is not being resolved
in four months? systems or persons?".

2. Sir, please bear with us, next time it would not happen again, on
our personal guarantee.

I am not really sure what the term next time means to telenor, because
apparently it has been the sixth time.

3. I am not really blaming the CSR because they are helpless in the
case, they can only view the system, not operate it or do anything to
it. They can only escalate the problem and that is about it, but if an
escalated problem takes more than commited time what should be the
compensation on the user end? Doesnt the operator charge a certain
amount of contract of value when the service level are not being met
properly? So why should the operator hesitate to pay the subscriber
damages? This is double standards.

On top of that, i praise telenor (sarcastically speaking) for advising
me to increase the credit limit. Now this is just plain buying time.
The problem will still exist and you still have to take the same pain
every time the bill is being paid. But it will only decrease the
frequency. Do they take their customers as idiots?

Plus, i am not really sure how a prepaid user would react to such
billing behaviour e.g. the credit not being registered after the card
is loaded or after easy load etc? can they take it?

As for the problem, I am not facing it alone. Some of my good friends
(both telenor employees and subscribers) are facing the same issue and
in the same time. The subscriber power of telenor is not that great to
afford these mishaps in relationship management. The billing system is
the heart of any mobile network, and if the heart is not pumping at a
good rate, anything will die eventually. Telenor does not boast a big
susriber base to afford such loose ends in the system, and 4 months is
a long time for this issue to persist. If this continues to exist, the
users will eventually churn out.

Another question that is bothering me, whats the point of post-paid
when it is effectively a pre-paid number, even worst, you are not
allowed to use the remaining 10%. And to top it all, with this issue,
why should a subscriber opt for a post paid? Isn't the only reason for
existence of a post paid connection is for the superiority of its
services?

PS: As I am writing this email, my number is working again, thanks to
Ms. Samiya (Corporate Sales Lahore, Telenor) and Mr. Nadeem Ahmed
(Sales and Customer Services, Islamabad) for their personal effort to
get the issue resolved in less than anticipated time (12 hours in this
case but still why 12 hours?).
PPS: The reason I am still choosing to send this email despite
praising the personal efforts is because I am not really sure if the
problem will exist in the future or not?

Regards
Yousuf Jawwad
+92 345 846 1115

[Asif Hanafi]

check if mobilink covers your area. I've had the 90% issue once with them and it took them 3 hours and a few minutes. There customer relationship program is amazing.

[Shahzad Alam]

Mibilink average lead time is two hours......

Sent from my iPhone

[Faisal Naik]

Its called 'fix response time' to be precise!

FN

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

[Bilal Khalid]

well its not only their Post Paid, their Pre Paid support is worst than that, i am Victim of their Scornful Pathetic CS, and you should feel lucky that you got response in HOURS, while i got reply on mail In A MONTH time, while on Helpline i got my problem resolved in four days.....and i am so fortunate that i got rid of Almighty Telenor, i have two connections, Zong and Post paid Ufone and both CS is wonderful and helpful, specially ZONG is top of the world, even have never experienced such CSR in Europe.

Bilal Khalid

[Ayad Aftab]

Friend, you're right on the spot!

 

Not so luckily, I have Telenor post-paid (Persona) connection and the billing issue has already sucked so much out of me that I've increased my credit limit and keep re-filling it every week. I've been through all of the pains that you've mentioned below - esp. my biggest pain is that why do they block the number (no voice no sms no data) at 90% of the credit limit. That is robbing off the remaining 10%. I remember once that I made a point to take the Telenor CSR (at The Plaza, Clifton, Karachi) to task. Visited them for 3 days straight and on the 3rd day I asked to see their branch manager - to my surprise, I was told that he is busy upstairs in his room and can't come down. WoW! Anyway, the counter staff made me talk to this guy on phone and I demanded him to solve my problem immediately otherwise I'm cancelling my post-paid connection. To my utmost shock, he said "sir that would be upto you, you can ask the counter staff for the cancellation if you want". Talk about Persona and this is what you get - ruthless!

 

And BTW, I know for sure that all these complaints wont pay any heed to the Telenor's high-ups - infact it's the same for all operators. These operators are absolutely not interested in the customers' service, they are only interested in their money! These are simply an advanced form of PCO walas - dukan-daari, parchoon-baazi, thats all!

 

I'm filing for MNP/port-out of my telenor connection to another operator soon and lets see how much pain do they have to give! ;)

 

 

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 11:17 PM, Yousuf Jawwad <yousuf...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Azfar Baig]

Mr. Yousaf

AoA

As a customer of Telenor Post Paid from last 4 years, and in this
period, I never face this type of problem. The problem you have
reported seems a system level issue, as compared to others operators
the billing & collection system of Telenor is totally automatic. I
used to pay my bill via Easy Load, and it update within 2 hours.

There is a possibility that, the number you are using erroneously
comes in some sort of blocking list or malfunctioning list.

I in person know some of high level personal in Telenor, if you say I
can talk to them and they will look into this matter down to line and
get it resolve permanently but for this your permission is required to
forward your number.

Regards,

Azfar Baig

[Shaheer Khan]

I hope someone from Telenor does read this. Pakistan needs these
voices!

Adding on, I'm a Telenor prepaid customer, and if I have a problem, I
don't call the CSRs - I email them. It's cheaper than calling (I don't
know why they have a two-tiered charging scheme for their helpline)
and you can have a record of all communication.

I'm surprised Telenor had many slip ups, and well - someone needs to
do alot of bashing at their end.

My sister has a 0343 number, and oddly, smart share doesn't work!
Telenor knows it doesn't work, and that's it! They aren't doing
anything about it.

Money is what many foreign companies are here for. Corp. social
responsibility is one excuse for making money.

Can someone please verify this: Telenor says (in the license agreement
form, at the back of each new connection form) that problems will be
resolved in 14 days (otherwise compensated)? Is that still there? I
remember reading it when I got a Telenor number during their
launching.

Let's hope things take shape very soon, otherwise people will shift. I
don't know why I keep thinking of switching when I haven't faced a
major issue to-date. Gut feeling, maybe?

[Mansoor Adenwala]

Wow! After reading all of this, I'm happy to be with warid!

For the last four years, I've had the postpaid connection and it's been on
direct debit. I haven't had any credit over-run problems yet, even when I
used upto 300% of my original credit limit my incoming and outgoing were
still open.

The only problem I had was when one transaction on my card didn't go
through. They took me off direct debit and asked me to come down to the
franchise office. I went and filled out a form in the evening and within a
couple of minutes, my bill was paid and I was back on direct debit.

Warid does have it's share of issues, but they seriously pale in comparision
to some of the other big names. I guess not being the 'largest network' does
have its benefits for the end users :)

rgds

--
-mansoor
Visit me @ http://www.wordofmansoor.com  

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
- Gandhi

[Tee Emm]

Telenor billing is accurate but they do have a problem when it comes to changing the status of a user from the blocked to normalized after payment. Had numerous personal experiences of that until paying well before time was acquired as a habit. 

-T

--
Tariq Mustafa         MSN:t...@hotmail.com  | Follow me here: http://friendfeed.com/abunet
Active Cell #        http://tinyurl.com/2ob35t  | Stuff I am sharing: http://tinyurl.com/2kagdu
                      Industry Blog: http://pakng.wordpress.com

[Shahid Mirza]

AOA

 

Dear Yousuf Sb

 

I also faced the same problem with Warid two years back. And I switched from Post Paid to Pre Paid after having the same problem for 2-3 times.

 

The easiest way to avoid such problem is to pay the bills before the blockage of service (outgoing or incoming).

 

As far as Telenor is concerned, my experience have never been good with Telenor. Their services are not as good as they claim.

 

 

 

Regards,

 

Shahid.

[Fawad Niazi]

I am a telenor post-paid persona user and i only face the problem that "when they reminds me about my bill delivery at home through SMS and also through phone call if it really get delays and worst of all when i did not pay bill, they block my service"

 

Ultimately i have to pay my dues!!!!!!!!

 

I guess, i should switch to some other operator:)

 

Just to share my experience!!!!!!!!!

[Waqa]

What I see, there is a problem with their customer relationing
(customer care).In my opinion, Customer would never be annoyed if
informed rightly. If they are unable to deliver, they should
communicate to the customer rather than wondering them around which
resulted in dissatisfaction.
End of the day, there is a customer who drives the show, not the
Investor.....

Regards & Happy Pakistan!!

[Sohail Hyder]

Well in pursuit of grabbing market share, what we overlook are some other important parameters, customer care being the most important one. One finds difficult to digest when it comes to a company having true corporate stature, long learning curve and above all strong technical and financial back. Its old adage: , Plug and Pray...

 

Rgds

 

-Sohail Hyder

> Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:30:51 -0800

> Subject: Re: telenor post paid issue

> From: waqara...@gmail.com
> To: telecom-gr...@googlegroups.com

[Rehan Jafry]

One more thing to add waqar....

 

 

The Customer pays your salary...so treat him with due respect and honor.

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

 

Rehan Jafry

 

Rehan Jafry

[Rehan Jafry]

maintaining customer care upto 90 % may be the mark to acheive or it could be more. We have heard almost the same for every GSM operator (most ppl still remember the voice conversations between customer and leading GSM operator customer support). Now it is happening with the IP customers as well who are using services in new era of broadband in pakistan.

 

 

How can we achieve the best level of customer satisfaction whether it is a GSM or IP customer????

 

 

 

Regards,

 

Rehan Jafry

 

--
Rehan Jafry

[Waqa]

IP customers:- Very sensitive domain in terms of customer care but
very much easy to handle as most of the IP market is mature enough to
understand the meaning of customer care if truly displayed. (Unlike
GSM industry where customer does not understand the technology
constraints) Customer Care was a key to success of IP Giants like
Cyber Net & Now with Mobilink Infinity/Nayatel in today's Pakistan.

Regards & Happy Pakistan