BSNL Bill Vol. 02 – What the Eff ?
BSNL Bill Vol.01
BSNL is at it again. It has been almost a year since one of our BSNL bills read some four digit amount. It was something like 4,000 rupees I believe. The thing was, these idiots/jackasses had advertised in “The Hindu” and also on their website that as a promotion they were allowing 250 Rs plan users downloads from 02:00 to 08:00 for two days. Obviously we took the invitation and downloaded something like 4 GB of data. Then when it came to the billing, they conveniently forgot about the promotional offer and charged us 4k!! To our shock, even the website was modified and the content announcing the offer was no longer to be found. Thank God then that we had a copy of the announcement on the newspaper. Equipped with that and the bill, my brother approached the BSNL office and after being asked to contact x,y,z and getting re-routed to x,y,z some n number of times they finally agreed that the fault was on their side. Even so, they did not redo the bill. They wanted that we pay up and said that they would adjust the amount with the bills in the future. We promptly had the Internet connection removed. (We always had the Airtel anyway. Screw the inefficient BSNL nincompoops.) See how Govt. companies work in India ?
BSNL Bill Vol. 02
Since then, almost a year has passed and when BSNL announced that they were giving upto 2Mbps speeds even for a 256Kbps scheme, I kinda wanted in. So we once again applied for BSNL DataOne and got the connection after waiting for a while. We got it last November I think. This evening my brother came back home and wanted me to guess the BSNL bill amount. I have not been using torrents in almost three months now. (Inspite of having an Airtel Unlimited and a PC dedicated to downloads. 
) I started by guessing 1,000 , 2,000 …etc. Then to my astonishment (wait, I am not sure that’s thw word.) , he tells me the bill amount is Rs. 37,000/- HOLY CRAP !!! How on earth ? No Downloads, I don’t even use BSNL for billing. My brother does. But then we do not download anything in general. BSNL was simply for faster browsing.
We logged into our account and found that we have used less than 2.0 GB of the allowed 2.5 GB. (See pic below) How on earth does the bill say THIRTY SEVEN THOUSAND RUPEESthen ? I heard that the billing software is being written by TCS. See what happens when you start employing people from Anna University ? They screw things up totally. For a company that claims to be working with Ferrari, this is a pretty shabby piece of software they have written for billing Internet Usage. (It’s more of a high school project if you ask me.)
If any lawyer is reading this accidentally, and does not want to charge much, we want to take this to the Consumer Court!! How can these people keep doing this and get away with it ?
The same incidence happened with my BSNL telephone bill…I really dunno WTF they r doing at the billing section..
Aravindhan
February 11, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I suppose that means it’s possible that you were actually paying an inflated bill all this time? I mean, maybe you were paying 900 instead of 400 or something like that. It’s possible that the anomaly was within expected limits? Man that sucks.
Just hope that they weren’t careful with their variables and then try to go for an integer overflow, you might end up with a negative bill
George
February 12, 2008 at 11:07 am
haha, that’s really awful eh. We have BSNL landline that’s it other than that nothing else. BSNL always impecunious.
rachel
February 12, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Hahaha dude! Serves you right for using DataOne Broadband! good luck paying off the Rs. 37000.
Marc
February 14, 2008 at 9:01 am
Rofl!
The Download speed is really good but the services must be improved.When ever i enter in to a VSNL office the place would like completely haunted.Old buggers sitting and chatting, who doesnt even know about the basics of how the internet works and are not ready to respond to us.
Gowtham
February 22, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I suppose you should use DataOne-Bandwidth 2.8.1 for checking Internet Usage. I find that a lot better than BSNL’s “Check Internet Usage” crap:
http://www.shaplus.com/dataone/index.htm
Praveen
February 24, 2008 at 1:54 am
@Gowtham,
Sadly the truth. But having said that, BSNL has improved by leaps and bounds. (Now, why am I saying this ? these buggers billed me 30k)
@Praveen,
Even the BSNL site shows our usage correctly. It clearly shows that we have used some 1.9 GB of the allowed 2.5 GB. Some glitch in their software I guess.
Karthik
February 24, 2008 at 3:31 pm
ROFL! All the best with the payment. LOL
Vinod
February 25, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Some of you didn’t get the point. I AINT PAYING!!
Karthik
February 25, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Yes you are. Don’t be silly. They will send thugs (linemen) to your house if you don’t.
Marc
February 25, 2008 at 5:37 pm
We’ll see. Plus even if they were to cut the internet/phone connection, we have an airtel landline as well as Internet not to mention the cell phones.
Karthik
February 26, 2008 at 9:19 am
Are you sure you were billed for the Internet? I mean.. sorry to say, but this is just too hard to believe. Did you check if your line was being tapped or something? Perhaps someone using your phone line at your cost?
I’ve been using dataone since 2 months of its inception, and my billing has been perfect! (thats about ~3 years)
Arun M
February 29, 2008 at 11:59 am
@Arun M,
Yes we were billed for the internet. The only issue was, they had included the previous months 2-8 usage for some stupid reason.
@Marc,
On pointing out the discrepancy in the billing, they later revised the bill amount to 1000 odd rupees. (Even if it did involve explaining to a few people what the issue was.) We have paid the bill off too.(1000 odd rupees)
Karthik
February 29, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Only a matter of time till the next 37k bill.
Marc
March 1, 2008 at 11:14 am
Ha ha, probably. You can never say. I blame TCS though. It’s their software that generated the bill.
Karthik
March 1, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Even I am thinking of getting my 10K bill ‘adjusted’
by some BSNL worker; I had a 250rs plan but later dscovered that skype downloads amount to around 100-200MB download per hour!!! Ofcourse the usage on skype was several hours though 
jughead
May 16, 2008 at 5:59 pm
@Jughead,(of Archies fame?)
My bill was not adjusted. I was billed fgor my night usage. Which actually continues to be the case. I should actually be filing a law suit against these idiots. And your line man can’t do it. Believe me.
Skype takes up a lot of bandwidth. Especially so if you use webcam at either end. We all learn from our mistakes don’t we.
Karthik
May 17, 2008 at 8:16 am
my internet bill for the month of march is 8,575/-[[[Only]]]. My plan is [02 am-to-08 am free] 500-C+.. i use net only for sending mail[very rare].. how to write the complaint to the bsnl???
shiv
May 17, 2008 at 9:47 pm
What you can do is switch to Airtel. Otherwise suffer.
Letters? BSNL is still in 1990. Everything is email based in Airtel.
Marc
May 18, 2008 at 10:31 am
@karthik
yeah we do learn the hard ways sometimes
Anyways.. the interesting thing is that when my dad talked to the BSNL guys about the skype & high bill… the reason they gave him was… “If you talk to somebody as far away as in Europe.. you naturally will get high bill … ”
Jughead
May 19, 2008 at 8:29 pm
@Shiv,
First, you need to be really sure that you did not exceed your limit. For which, you need to check your usage logs and make sure you have used only so much.
I can’t understand how by sending only mail, your bill touched 8000 rupees. You must surely have downloaded a few things in normal time. Things like Youtube videos do take up some bandwidth.
The response I got when I complained about my 30k bill was. “Sir, it must be a virus. It must be using Internet without you knowing” Balls!! If you don’t know what you are talking about, they will fool you with something like that.
@Marc,
BSNL people respond to email as well. And pretty promptly at that.
@Jughead,
Ha ha. Idiots!! But then Skype does take up bandwidth. You should log into your BSNL account once in a while and check the usage. Else use a third party software on your computer to check the usage.
Karthik
May 23, 2008 at 10:34 am