On the 19th of July, a bright Saturday morning, only the first two LED’s on my modem were blinking. It wasn’t an unusual sight. At once, it was understood that, I would have no internet for the rest of the weekend. I was quite used to seeing it that way. A regular occurrence, so, nobody was really concerned. A friend was coming over, I had lots to do.
The first thing I did, on Monday morning was to call the call-center to lodge a complaint. I’m sure those folks were pretty used to having my account no, on their complaint rolls every month. I’m your patient, persistent, persevering, regular customer who will not let go until my issue is sorted out. Nobody took my complaint. Again, it wasn’t an unusual concept. I decided to try my luck later.
I repeated the same process over the week. Every day, I received the same response. Over the years, these ‘not unusual concepts’, had become ingrained into my memory that, it made me feel nothing was terribly wrong. They had numbed me down. I did everything; the goddamned recorded message asked me to do. Pressed, every button, waited forever.
The executives were ‘very busy’ for some strange reason. I couldn’t figure out why. I had never been, so unlucky in my calling endeavors. Even if the call center dudes were super busy, I used to get through the calls after a while. I used to start with sweet talking, then ordering and finally threatening to pull off my connection. It used to work. When it dint this time, my reputation was at stake.
At the end of one week, I was an exasperated, frustrated, on the verge of blowing up- customer. Yet, I waited patiently hoping the modem would flicker back alive. Unplugged it, re-screwed the cable, pressed the on and off button. Nothing would bring it back. My connection was dead but frustratingly alive. I would’ve killed to put it back to working. Before I decided to shove it down the 2nd floor, I called them one last time. It worked!!
I was all ready to pounce on him, rip him apart. A volcano was waiting to explode. Accusations were all rehearsed. Sadly, it all fell flat. The executive slowly broke the bad news to me. Their Chennai operations were being closed down. There was some rift with the ruling party, hence, they were moving out. I was at a loss of words. All I could manage was an “oh!” It was all over.
It was time to bid goodbye, to an association of 6yrs. Time to move on to another service provider. This connection, no matter how bad it was, is still special to me. We subscribed to this when, broadband was still a novelty. I’ve practically grown up with this. Screechy dial-up gave way to noiseless broadband.
As I plugged out the modem, rolled in the wires, dusted, and wrapped the gadget in plastic. There was a tiny lump in my throat. Was feeling, a bit too senti. More like pulling someone off life support. But it had to go.
R.I.P, my baby! Hope you get a lot more new customers in your other locations. As a loyal customer, here’s one request, kindly mete out, better customer service. Remember, if not you; there are many other dudes hanging around, waiting for a piece of the pie in market-share. Good Luck!
