10 June,2011 06:25 AM IST | | Parth Satam
Indiagames.com apologises for faulty billing and refunds aggrieved city BSNL customer
Acting on MiD DAY report 'Quit playing games with us, say BSNL customers' dated June 1, 2011, the online games portal www.indiagames.com has officially apologised for its mistake in billing a Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited customer Sanjay Sanjnani for a service he had not subscribed for. "There was a mistake from our end because of which our valued customer has been wrongly charged. Our official called his residence to confirm his address and customer details and he will soon receive a cheque for the bill amount paid by him," said Tejraj Parab, Indiagames business head, who was in Delhi.
Relieved: MiD DAY report had highlighted the grievances of BSNL
customers, who had to pay for services they did not want
The aggrieved customer Sajnani said he had indeed received a call from an official yesterday. "He asked me for my address and other contact details. He told me they wanted the details to confirm my identity and to refund the amount that I had hitherto spent on the gaming service. This is a good development since they promised to look into the issue and repay the amount." Parab went on take "complete responsibility" for the mistake and requested this reporter to leave BSNL out of the issue.
He also explained the service provider's side of the story. "While subscribing to the service the customer is specifically asked whether s/he wants to be subscribed to the service. Within 72 hours the customer is called again to confirm if s/he wishes to continue further. All the calls are recorded and the recordings are then sent to the head office in Mumbai where the verification cell listens to each and every call once again to check if the customer's response was genuine. If he finds that the consumer hasn't said yes or has given an ambiguous answer, he directs the executive to call the customer again to confirm. In this case, the double authentication procedure failed and Sajnani was billed which happens in very rare cases. In past also we have refunded our customers," said Parab.
Parab said the free trial for a month had been discontinued in various regions, including Pune in February itself. "We have 300 to 400 customers subscribing to this service everyday and we have it on other service providers like Airtel, TATA and Reliance as well," he said. To reduce such confusions, the gaming portal now plans to start mobile alerts instead of e-mails. "People don't part with their cell phone numbers nowadays and the e-mails we send out go in spam. We will see how many customers respond to our mobile alerts and then start it nationwide," Parab said.
