This is a post (and a letter) to highlight the horrendous quality of internet service from You Broadband.
8th June 2014
To,
The CEO
You Broadband, Chennai
India
Sir,
I’m a business-level internet user, depending on close to 24×7 internet connectivity in both Indian and US time zones. I used – and still use – Airtel’s reliable 2 Mbps broadband, but I was looking for a faster connection to improve my business. I made the mistake of turning to You Broadband’s 20 Mbps connection, nearly 6 months ago. I consider myself a patient person, but You Broadband’s consistently egregious quality of service has tested my patience so many times, that it has compelled me to write this open letter to the management of You Broadband.
Over the last 6 months, You Broadband has demonstrated why India’s internet quality of service and speed are ranked an atrocious 130 by Ookla – lagging behind smaller nations like Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal, Nigeria, Laos and Zimbabwe. Worse, You Broadband’s approach to providing a reliable, consistent and high-speed internet connection to its Indian consumers is analogous to the UP government’s approach providing a safe haven for women – non-existent. You Broadband epitomizes everything that is wrong with India, including:
Abysmally Erratic Connectivity
As an internet service provider, You Broadband has failed spectacularly. Never in the last 6 months has You Broadband’s internet service gone uninterrupted for more than an hour. The typical nature of the service has been 5-10 minutes of uptime, followed by 15-30 seconds of downtime, repeated over and over again. Except when the downtime has lasted for hours, with excuses like “fiber cut” – at least once a week. And the problems have been the worst between 6 PM and 9 PM every day – when most business-related users in India are communicating with their US counterparts. Do you know what happens when a VoIP/Skype call loses internet connectivity for a few seconds? Do you know what happens when a VPN connection to a secure, corporate network loses internet connectivity for a few seconds? Both get disconnected and lost. This dreadful quality of service has resulted in hundreds of hours of lost productivity and lakhs of rupees in lost revenue – and have gained India and Indians the ignominious reputation of having no quality focus.
Unscrupulous Technicians
Every time I’ve logged a service request about a flaky or slow internet connection, the service request has been closed within hours or a day, without You Broadband having fixed it, without a technician having attended to it, and without anyone even contacting me about it (!!) I abruptly and unexpectedly get SMSs stating “Dear Customer your complain is addressed. Please check & If NOT satisfied send the following SMS…” [sic]. I send the response SMS or call the call center, and get back an SMS stating “We have registered your complain. The same shall be attended on priority. Your new Request id is…” [sic] – which is closed once again without action, thus repeating the futile, frustrating and unethical process over and over again. When I call the customer service line to tell them that the call was closed without resolving it, the customer service executives appear clueless and puzzled. When I call the technicians directly, they blame the wifi router – which works perfectly well with my Airtel broadband. Sometimes the technicians blame the Chennai city government for cutting fiber cables. Sometimes they blame the problems on “server issues”. Obviously You Broadband’s technicians are unscrupulous (closing calls without acting upon them), dishonest (lying to customers and their call center) and lazy (not resolving any issues).
Dishonest Sales Executives
When the sales executives first came to my doorstep, I was wary and leery of the claims that they made about You Broadband’s high speed and no connection problems. They assured me that while there were other areas in Chennai that had problems, Aminjikarai had none because of their fiber optic cables. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the quality of service and connectivity would be this pathetic. Or that the sales executives would be such blatant liars.
Clueless Call Center and Management
You Broadband’s call center for customer service and its management teams have proven to be utterly clueless about the quantum of the problem and the extent to which the cancer of abominable service have spread within the organization. The call center either does not maintain or does not care about the history and frequency of problems faced by customers; each call is a new one, and each call is punctuated by “sorry for the inconvenience” – only to be repeated over and over again, sometimes several times a day. Neither the call center executives not the managers have a clue whether technical issues were actually solved or were falsely closed by You Broadband’s useless technicians. Emails to You Broadband’s published “nodal officers” go unanswered, begging the question as to whether there are any nodal officers actually in existence. Piling insult over injury, despite You Broadband’s regular outages that have caused down-times of 1 to 1.5 months over the last 6 months, they have the temerity – nay, the gall - to ask me to renew my subscription!
Widespread Dissatisfaction
A Google search on the internet reveals that there are tens of thousands of complaints from angry You Broadband customers who’ve been cheated by You Broadband’s sales executives and distressed by You Broadband’s erratic and poor internet connections. www.consumercourt.in, www.grahakseva.com, www.mouthshut.com, www.consumercourtforum.in, broadbandforum.co, www.complaintboard.in, forum.indiaconsumercomplaints.com, www.akosha.com, www.grahaksuraksha.com, customercomplaint.co.in and dozens of similar forums are filled with vitriol from furious You Broadband customers who have nowhere else to turn, after being given the virtual finger by You Broadband’s impotent customer service team.
That You Broadband belongs to a class of companies that think that Indians deserve third grade products and services is not surprising. That this unethical, reprehensible venture is created, advised and funded by British Gas, TRG Management LP and Citigroup Venture Capital is surprising. Should these 3 organizations be ashamed of themselves for spawning, rearing and encouraging such a morally bankrupt venture? Definitely.
You Broadband and its 3 parent companies must be aware that the TRAI has updated its Quality of Service regulations for broadband, adding a clause which allows it to penalize service providers that fail to meet the QoS benchmarks, submit falsified reports on QoS parameters, or fail to submit reports. I’m sure that the TRAI would love to hear from frustrated and disgruntled You Broadband customers, as to the levels of depravity that You Broadband has plumbed. These organizations must also be aware that telecom users (mobile providers, internet service providers, broadband service providers, DTH operators, cable TV operators and landline service providers) in India can now approach consumer courts directly to settle their grievances. I’m also sure that the tens of thousands of You Broadband customers who are fed up to the back teeth with You Broadband’s shenanigans would love to take this alleged internet service provider to court.
I hope that this letter will make a difference. While You Broadband and its parent companies have lost me as a customer forever, perhaps this letter might serve to warn others from making the same mistake I did – of using You Broadband, or might prompt a change for the better within You Broadband.
Edit: A side effect of the behavior and policies of recalcitrant ISPs like You Broadband is that the effect on fledgling startups in India is devastating. Startups are often strapped for cash, and cannot afford both dedicated leased lines and backup internet connections – yet their ISPs try to sell them dedicated leased lines “to improve the quality of their internet connection” (You Broadband did). Not only is that unethical and borderline illegal (deliberately providing bad internet connectivity at “regular prices” so that consumers are forced to upgrade to highly expensive connections), it stifles – and even kills – startups that would rather use their severely limited funds to further innovate and release their products.
We had really tough time with YOU Broadband and moved to ACT. The service was really bad and the customer service was even worse.
Please don’t let it ruin your business.
Regards,
Praveen
Same goes for Tikona.
Anurag
Kunal,
You may want to try Airtel 4G if available in your area. Gives faster speed and doesn’t depend on terrestrial lin
Tikona’s quality of connectivity varies from area to area. But yes, they employ a bunch of uncaring (or perhaps stupid, I must say) customer “care” execs.
-Sid
Hi Kunal,
Though I would truly agree that Broadband services in India is , leave
broad band. internet in India, is one of the worst of the worst
throughout the world. I used Tata photon, BSNL Indicom, Airtel,
Vodafone, and many more which claimed to be best when it starts it’s
plan. Actually it’s nothing but marketing. Every one is getting
internal service from Bharati Airtel or auction. The spectrum or
bandwidth India country gets is at this moment reasonable, but every
ISP are using one or the marketing and services and each have their
own loop holes. I am using Airtel at this moment. I have used it’s 3G
and 4G. 4G is not everywhere mind you. And and after usage limit
Airtel goes down such a low speed that even Nepal or other countries
would have better Internet than India. I personally went to service
station holding my Dongle for Airtel offices. And had experienced one
of the disgusting hopeless one of the inhuman reactions of their
service team. Be it in Bangalore Tamilnadu, or any place you will find
all and every ISP provider’s service team one of the ugliest since
ironically they don’t have nothing to give them apart from convincing
the customers to calm down. I have faced a situation when a Servicer
provider in Shimoga tried to act like Goon behaving rude and not
resolving the issue claiming that I should reach the place where I
bought the dongle.
This I faced situation not only in Airtel, but BSNL, Vodafone and I
can’t list what not I have tested.
It’s better like when you don’t have internet speed, pay money and
take next plan is what Indian ISP providers idea is all for a
customers.
It’s like a day will come when and unknown company from States comes
down or gets the distribution licence of Internet as International
service and screw up all these ISPs with their best service probably
for sometime and than get back to their earlier stage.
So my personal thought is, it’s useless you send email to CEO or even
PM of India. Our Internet leave about for startup even for a common
people, Internet by our so called prestigious service providers are
hopeless and it will be for 50+ years more. So just change the plan
and use it till it is better. And if plan completes add new plan and
just shell out money. Be it YOU or Airtel or any ISP Broadband
providers, no one will be troubling you with their so called
Einstein’s logical of “Speed of Internet”..
Change ISP or plan is the only solution. Or we need a revolution like
crazy which closes all these ISP And make one proper ISP which
provides best and maintains best service throughout. which is hard to
imagine.
Hi Rohit,
Your email looks like it was written from the heart – looks like you’ve been burned by bad ISPs. There should be an ISP consumer’s union – not just a forum or a court that can take years to dole out justice.
I hope that your “ISP karma” improves and that you get better service than you and I have had!
Regards,
Kunal
True Kunal,
Even I reached consumer court many times. And many forums. Nothing
properly make this ISP learn. I mean literally man, I feel ISP don’t
even feel shit about their work responsbility or even feel shame about
themselves of their hopeless work even if you spit at their face.
I have friends from different countries, whenever they use internet in
India, I feel like bury these ISPs in ocean when listen to plea of
friends from west. I have so much anger deep within myself that If I
get even Minister of IB who give out licenses to any ISP in India and
even BSNL if he gets something bad happened in future. I would
celebrate Dhasheera for sure for wishing Evil dead.
Sorry but truly I am one of the worst hit customer of many of such ISP.
Sad to hear about the ISP issues you all are facing. We’ve been using Beam in Hyderabad, and I can say they are incredible. The support is timely, and they often intimate before hand via SMS for possible interruptions. In fact, the post support feedback calls are annoying.
Hope it gets to other cities soon.
Santosh Achari
Between poor capacity planning, sub-par equipment and/or performance, tuning of network parameters and incorrect understanding of technology (leading to poor systems design), the Indian broadband consumer has only hope as a strategy!. At least if capacity is the issue – noting the densely populated areas of broadband users – it can be solved like how it is being done for stadiums in US, Europe and now Brazil. “Stadium Wi Fi” is here.
This may be one solution until the ISP karma improves.
http://www.ctovision.com/2014/06/google-will-now-tell-good-bad-internet-service/
Head person in gurgoan youbroadband ,rahul sharma..informed me fake information about refund .i took a connection on 5 august on 2015..but the guy who took money from me ddnt inform me about that the connection duration will be 7 days..he told me that you ll get connection in 2 days… 4 days a wireman came to fix thaftere wire…but then also they ddnt fix up my net..next day the modem guy came…then he told me that they only fix the modem withe wire..not wifi..i was shocked..i told them that i need my refund ..then he told me it ll take 15 20 days…but it wasnt a truth.. Its been 21 days……..i went there office..now i ll get to know from the same person ..that now i ll get my money back in more 45 days according to company policy ..please please please share this info..there internet connection sucks..the are bloody fraud…
Connection..1446c ..sector 45 gurgoan..
I have been facing issues with connection for the past couple of months . made a lot of complaints about the same all in vain . I actually feel after innumerous mails eople like cynthia joseph and preti (you broadband ) are a big wastage to the resources at you . Absolutely irresposnsible people after 4 mails to them not a single reply from this unprofesional (miss joseph) i am feeling that i have made the worst mistake of my life and being cheated and frustrated . I have also sent them mails with the screenshots attached about the constant connection problems but still absolutely nothing has been done .
The only thing you can expect from them is regular disconnections in services . The most common reasons they can come up with would be fiber cut or power failure . In between there were days when the disconnections were 3-4 times a week . I seriously wonder why they take 14% service tax . I have written to the customer service and the appleate authority as per their complaints process still nothing is being done about the same . My last complaint they just made sure that they replied so to show everybody that something is been done about the complaint but everything is fraud and cheating with this company > they are so irresponsible that inspite of writing to appeleate authority I have been ignored just goes to show what values this company works on . My frustration has reached where I have decided to share my experience on social media on a regular basis