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THE telecom industry has registered a phenomenal growth. There are more than 100 million telephone subscribers in the country. Out of this, the mobile subscribers (53.64 million) far outnumber the fixed line subscribers (46.40 million). Even the total number of broadband subscribers in the country has gone up to 2.28 million. These figures, put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) represent the growth as on April 30, 2005. It is strange that a sector that is servicing so many subscribers is not willing to provide an independent system of consumer complaint redress. The telecom operators have failed to understand or gauge the increasing level of consumer dissatisfaction with some of their services, especially the mobile services. The call centres or helplines that they provide are often unable to resolve the complaint and there is no way a consumer can contact a senior official in the organisation. Unlike the insurance and banking sectors, which provide for ombudsmen in different regions of the country to resolve consumer disputes, the telecom companies have no such mechanism. The National Consumer Helpline, in its first monthly progress report submitted to the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, analysed the calls that were received during April. It came as no surprise that 30 per cent of the calls were complaints against telecom operators. The complaints pertained to the inordinate delay in changing over from pre-paid to post-paid service, poor network coverage, overcharging, disconnection even after bill payment, delay in resolving complaints, failure to activate the recharge card, charging for SMS declared free, etc. Initiated and funded by the ministry, the toll-free national helpline (1600-11-4000), run by the Department of Commerce, Delhi University, received 1585 calls during April. Complaints against all products put together came to another 30 per cent, while complaints pertaining to other services such as banks (8 per cent), insurance (5 per cent), electricity supply (1 per cent) were far less than that of telecom (30 per cent). The helpline also gives the callers the telephone numbers, addresses of senior officials to whom consumers can write for the amicable settlement of their disputes. However, in case of telecom companies, particularly the private players, the helpline faced a peculiar problem. When letters to individual operators asking for the names and addresses of consumer grievance officers elicited no response, the helpline got the information from the TRAI, but found it to be outdated. It’s efforts to get the names and addresses from the Mobile Operators’ Association also bore no fruit. The helpline is now seeking the intervention of the Consumer Affairs Ministry in the matter. It’s time every telecom operator nominated a nodal officer to deal with consumer complaints and publicised the same. |
