Majority of complaints received at the National Consumer Helpline were from telecom subscribers, followed by LPG, banking, PDS and insurance customers

Moneylife Digital team

The telecom sector in India tops in the number of consumer complaint received by the National Consumer Helpline (NCH) in December 2011. According to experts, unless regulators act upon fast, the situation of harassed mobile phone users’ will continue to remain the same or may even deteriorate.
 
Achintya Mukherjee, secretary, Bombay Telecom Users’ Association, said, “In my view the situation will continue to remain same unless the regulators’ tighten the process of dealing the complaints and increase the intensiveness of it.”

“Timely auditing of the companies (service providers) is required in monitoring whether and how various complaints relating to billing, value-added services, mobile number portability (MNP), have been dealt with,” he added.

According to NCH, which works under the ministry of consumer affairs, out of the total 13,295 complaints received during December, about 14.6% belonged to the telecom sector. This was followed by LPG, banking, public distribution service (PDS) and insurance.

Many telecom subscribers complained that at times, value-added services were automatically activated on their mobiles. Then there are complaints relating to wrong billing and denial of MNP on frivolous grounds. For instance, many a time users’ are denied to port out by the service providers citing contractual obligation.

Anil Prakash, president, Telecom Users Group, India feels that there is a need to upgrade the services of the outsourced call centers by the service providers. He told Moneylife, “Service providers are increasing their customer base. But how about improving their networks? There are so many complaints of call drops. About 96% of the subscribers are use pre-paid plans and they call the company’s call centers for complaints. However these call centers are outsourced and are ill-equipped to help the users. There is a need to upgrade these facilities.”

However AR Shenoy, Mumbai-based consumer activist says, “Though telecom has the highest number of complaints, one need to know which area within the sector has maximum grievances and also whether it is MNP or pesky calls or broadband services.”

According NCH, maximum consumer complaints calls were received from Delhi followed by Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.