An open letter to my failed internet provider
Hello ACT Broadband,
( Disclaimer: I have paid my bill for the month of November [ in-spite of not having access to internet from your famed ‘fibernet’ cables for the more than half of the last month and which remains dead to this date] from my reliable Tata Photon connection and the confirmation screenshot is attached herewith! )
It was in the month of May, 2014, like many other tech-professionals and internet fans, I too felt the arrival of a savior from the boring 2–4 MBPS connections that established-players like Airtel had to offer by then (which I would later regret unconditionally!). There was this new kid on the block called ‘ACT’ which promised those elusive download speeds of 20+ MBPS which were distant dreams for countries like India at that point of time. They were even promising disruptively less monthly charges for those ‘holy-grail’ type of download speeds!
Temptation! Temptation! Temptation!
It was a no-brainer for ardent internet fans like me, to dump that Airtel ‘broadband’ connection and welcome this ‘uber-cool’ new kid on the block. Oh boy, you even had a customer care service up and running!
Following days were ‘honeymoon’ period for me, flaunting the blazing fast connection, which made me hyper-productive at home, my kid enjoyed on-demand youtube songs and rhymes, I felt at par with my US buddies and at times surpassed their download speeds and felt euphoric about it, and it was a period of accomplishment for the first few months. Around 3–4 months later, the connection was facing random outages, and your customer care had been prompt enough to get them fixed, although the number of outages were consistent. By roughly about 6th month of my relationship with you, outages were normal, and yeah you fixed them too ( although little later than your usual ETA ). I suppose you were getting enough new customers, and you had picked up the good old trick of ignoring existing customers pretty quickly.
Am thankful to the little Tata Photon Wifi dongle which I use as a backup, which has come to my rescue almost all the time when you dumped me!
It was the last month, just after mother nature unleashed its fury over Chennai, you guys really started to get under my skin! The rain started ravaging the city, by around the mid of November, and while the whole city was blacked out, and people were looking for basic shelters and a safer place, I never complained of a dead internet connection! While the city was trying to get back on its knees, and started recovering with the start of December, and by the time power and mobile networks were up, my Wifi modem remained dead … but I kept away from complaining trying to be empathetic with those ground workers who were probably working their butt out to restore the submerged cables or junction boxes. It is now the 18th of December, and the city is back in all its glory showing its spirit of life, but my DLink Wifi modem refuses to budge! Frustation took a different turn and I took on to twitter to express my angst:
I even got some ambitious replies from your competitors!
Can you let me know what you meant by ‘we will get in touch’ in the reply tweet? I wont be surprised if you guys ignore this Email too, and I believe I have had enough.
Let me tell you — a humble update giving a realistic uptime, and a reason for this inordinately eternal connection issue would have made me happy and I would have kept quite and be contempt with my alternate internet devices. But I have made up my mind and its time to move on…
Please disconnect my broadband with immediate effect and I am going to go to the next level, if I receive a bill again from helpdesk@alerts.acttv.in
Frustatingly Thankful,
Ranjith
Chennai . India
