Customers taken for a ride

Hidden charges

The wonders of the mobile phone will never cease. Large billboards and television advertisements promise a variety of services to the subscribers of different cell phone service providers, like cricket updates, jokes sent on a daily basis and even your horoscope, messaged to you every morning. What these brands don’t advertise, however, is the cost of these supposedly brilliant offers.

Even wor­se, customers are sometimes signed up for these plans without being informed, and are not eve­n aware of the fact that they are being charged for them. Metr­olife speaks to a few Bangaloreans to fin­d out if they’ve ever had such an experien­ce.

Babu, a service engineer, says he has used different networks in the last eight years, and has faced this problem with almost all of them. “They send me messages about cricket updates and other schemes, and then charge me for them,” he complains, adding that the problem seems to intensify in rural areas.

“My parents live in a village, and they face a lot of difficulties with their subscription. They are called and told to subscribe to new plans, and then their balance is deducted for no reason. They tell me about this every time I visit them,” he explains.

He adds that although he used to call customer care helplines to complain earlier, he has now ceased to do so. “These companies have started charging us for calling to make a complaint. They tend to put you on hold and make it very difficult to connect with an operator, which ends up being a huge waste of both time and money,” he says.

Shah (name changed), who works as a customer care operator at a prominent cell phone network, claims that he receives calls from several enraged customers who want to know why their bills are so high, or balance so low.  “In my line of work, I get complaints like these from customers very frequently,” he says, but adds that he has never faced any such problem with his personal mobile connection in the three years that he has been using it.

Javare Gowda, a labourer, recently purchased a prepaid connection, and says that he is wary of such offers.

“My subscription is very recent, so I haven’t faced such problems yet. However, I’ve heard of other people having these difficulties, so I’m careful to not sign up for any offers. Whenever I get messages about new schemes or plans, I ignore them,” he says.

However, not everyone is this cynical when it comes to dealing with their network subscriptions.  Nagaraj, who works in an apparel store, says that he has had the same connection for the last ten years, and is very pleased with it.

“I have a postpaid subscription, and have never faced problems with my money being cut for no reason. Recently, I shifted to the 3G plan and I’m very happy with it,” he says.