Mar 22nd, 2008 | Pakistan | 9 Comments
I, the good cop, mailed a long rant to the PTCL Broadband manager, Mr. Ali Raza Baloch, last week, after getting his email from the helpline.
He forwarded my complaint to a couple of relevant people, asking them to help me out, but that didn't happen.
Meanwhile, a friend, the bad cop, sent a written complaint to PTA - the PTA people wrote a letter to PTCL, and PTCL called my friend, and promised they will upgrade 'tomorrow' - which happened to be a local holiday, so 'tomorrow' never came.
Today, my friend went in person to the Broadband office, spent two hours there, met Ali Raza face-to-face and explained the situation to him. Ali Raza contacted his team, found out that my friend's upgrade was stuck in Islamabad somehow, and got the wheels in motion for him. My friend did manage to get my connection upgraded in the process though - so when I woke up today, I found my modem connected at 510kbps.
So, for anyone who is desperate to get the promised upgrade, you can be proactive and follow the same route instead of waiting for something that PTCL owes you but is reluctant to provide. I'm getting about an 80% throughput - 410kbps or so, which is good enough for jerk-free Youtube, and the upload speed of 300kbps is helping me save a lot of time as well. 20$ for 512kbps is still about 6 times more expensive than the 50$ for 6mbps that my American friends enjoy, but I hope we will get there eventually. Thank god for competition.
Mar 14th, 2008 | Etc, Pakistan | 3 Comments
It is better to promise little and deliver more, instead of the other way round - this is a valuable lesson that we shouldn't have to learn - it should be painfully obvious. And yet, when we enter the 'real world' with infinite energy and little experience but enough ambition to conquer the world, we hastily agree to overly optimistic deadlines. Most often, we end up revising the same deadlines that seemed easily manageable a month ago, apologizing to the boss/client all the time, and putting in all-nighters and watching in desperation as two new bugs surface after one is fixed. Then we grow up, and learn to multiply both time and cost by a number much greater than 1.0 before estimating anything. We still miss deadlines… but we feel less stupid about them, and can charge more in some cases… but I digress…
What I wanted to say is, PTCL botched it.
PTCL announced that they will double the bandwidth on the 1st of March. They failed to deliver on that promise, the reason: "it's a weekend, our staff is not available, we will do it on monday".
The bandwidth was still not upgraded the next week - the reason: "We need to upgrade the ports from Islamabad, so it will happen in a single transaction for ALL the Pakistani users".
Yesterday (14th of March, half the month gone), I got an SMS from PTCL when I woke up at noon, telling me that my package has been upgraded to 512kbps 'according to my request' - so I turned on my machine, but the router was still showing 256kbps. After 4 hours, I called their helpline and asked them why had they sent me the SMS when I was still getting the same old speed? The lady (who sounded overwhelmed) asked me for my phone number, and then told me that my upgrade was in its final stage, I asked her how many stages do they have, she said "four". She said it should be complete "any time now", so I said thank you and hung up.
24 hours later (almost 9AM, 15th of March, 2008), I still have the same speed. After looking at the time and realizing that it is morning already, I just called their helpline again (yes, you can call this live blogging too) and told the PTCL rep that I was getting the same old speed despite their SMS - the girl at the other end took my number, checked her system and told me "Sir, our systems are still showing 256kbps". I swallowed the compulsory "No shit!" retort (I am beginning to understand why they prefer female customer relations employees), and asked her why, with their promise of 1st March, have they been unable to upgrade the bandwidth after two weeks. Her response: "Sir, we had till the 15th of March to upgrade. You can call in one hour and check again".
Now this is not right! I can see that they had to rush their price-cuts to meet the competition, and I realize that the 1st of the month is when most of the customers would consider switching, so PTCL had to try to retain that segment of their customer base by promising them the shiny new deal - but why did they have to promise the exact date if they were unsure that they could handle the upgrade workload, why the hell are they still considering 15th of March as their deadline (which is from PTA), and more importantly, why can't they apologize about it, as they have basically swindled me out of 653.50 Rs.
After the prescribed one hour wait, I called 1236 again - this time their support gal simplified it for me and told me in no uncertain terms that "Many customers have already had their account upgraded, yours will be done soon too, perhaps in a day or two. PTCL has promised the upgrades so you will get the upgrade soon". I asked the same 'why promise…' question, and she gave me the same 'please wait for a couple of days…' response.
I would have been perfectly okay with waiting for a few weeks while PTCL upgraded, but the above situation has converted me into an irked customer (note: not a completely 'unsatisfied' customer, their actual wares are good, even though their customer 'service' is lacking) when they could have used the chance to convert me into a super-satisfied customer. I can survive with my current 256kbps, but I hate being manipulated like this. PTCL should fire its marketing department and hire a few more techs - to get things done.
Time to sleep.
Feb 29th, 2008 | Pakistan | 11 Comments
I heard the (semi-verified) rumor that PTCL is doubling its bandwidth from tomorrow (1st March 2008). They will be dropping the 256k package, and bringing all costs 1 step down, so the new rates are going to be 512kbps for 1200Rs. and 2Mbps for 5000 Rs.! That is a step closer to the rates that should have been the last few years.
With the frequent bans (youtube last week, blogger/blogspot today), I can't see what we will do with all this extra bandwidth, but it is generous of PTCL nonetheless. Lets see if link.net knows how to limbo.
UPDATE: It is official now! [link] They are also removing the download limits.
Jan 31st, 2008 | Life, Pakistan | 2 Comments
LESCO, teamed with my local ISP (who gives bandwidth on LAN, and therefore, dies with every one hour power failure) finally made me bite the bullet and move to the PTCL Triple Play Project aka Broadband Pakistan today. The PTCL techs just left after installing the connection (in 10 minutes) and the speed tests so far are not bad at all.
Contrary to my expectations, I have had a very smooth customer service experience till now. One of the few good things about Broadband Pakistan is that you can get it upgraded and downgraded for free with one phone call, and you will be charged according to your usage. They didn't give me a wifi modem though (they save them for the 1Mbps lines, discriminating 8@$tards!), but told me to call their office after 4-5 days and they will change the modem (I hope they are true to their words). Now I just need to test the one dozen UPSes lying around to find a working one and I'll be a bit less dependent on LESCO.
