My experience with Airtel fraudbytes

November was spent mostly outside Bangalore, primarily in Mumbai. I had agreed to be part of the team for our organization’s CMMi Services Level 5 appraisal (it is commonly and wrongly referred to as Level 5 certification, there is no such ‘certificate’ given by CMMi.  It was a good experience, I will detail that in another post, but the primary purpose of this post is to highlight my not-so-pleasant experience with Airtel’s services.

I subscribe to a 3G data pack costing 250 rupees a month, which gives me a data allowance of 1 GB. Normally, I consume 300-400 MB during the month, but given that I was going to be in Mumbai for most of the bill cycle, I expected to cross that limit easily. Airtel has a service called Smartbytes, which allows you to buy additional data usage beyond your monthly limit. Luckily for me, the excellent data usage monitor that is part of Android since 4.0 allows me to keep a close watch on my usage on a real time basis, so my plan was to monitor the usage and once I reach the limit, subscribe to a Smartbytes pack costing 300 rupees that would give me an extra 1 GB of data.

I was naïve to think that it would all work perfectly. Here is what actually happened

-  I reached the limit around the 2nd of December. So, I went over to their page and attempted to subscribe but got an error that my unbilled had exceeded my Credit limit. That was strange, as my bill usually is around 1100-1200 rupees. So, I logged onto their portal and checked the unbilled amount, which was 3500 rupees. Apparently, their unbilled figure calculates data charges at the usual rate of 3 ps/10KB, which works out to 3000 Rs/GB.

- As I wanted to get the Smartbytes activated, I logged into the self service portal and paid 1500 rupees into my account, thinking it would solve the issue. Unfortunately, it did not and I was not able to activate the package.

- Over the next 2 days, I called Airtel thrice and spoke to their customer service rep (and paid for the privilege). Each time, they assured me that it would get activated but it did not.

- I also contacted them on twitter through their customer care as well as sent them an email. Other than meaningless assurances, there was no action taken

- Finally, on 6th, I gave up and told them not to bother, as my billing cycle was ending on that day. I’d consumed around 1.2 GB of data for which I would have to pay an extra 600+ rupees instead of the 300 that I would have paid.

While I have no way of knowing for sure, I feel that I have been made a victim of a deliberate strategy to overcharge. While their credit limits may be in force, it would have been very easy for their CC to override and enable the package, but they chose not to do it. After I got my bill, I tweeted about this and had 2-3 meaningless conversations with some person without any action. If they really cared about a customer who gives them 3000 rupees every month, they would’ve said “Sir, we’re very sorry that you could not activate Smartbytes, to compensate, we will retrospectively apply the package from the date you requested and give you a credit for the difference”. I don’t really expect it from them, though.

 

Work Life Balance

A friend recently put up a post commenting on work life balance. I generally agree but have a slightly different angle on it. This is relevant primarily to the IT services industry, based on my experience, but may be applicable to others as well.

My view is that most of the people who complain about work life balance hate their jobs. They hate it so much that it becomes a chore and drains them physically and mentally. This is especially prevalent among the people in their late 20s and 30s. A big reason for this is the monotony of most IT careers, most projects are very similar in nature and with the industry trying to get into longer term outsourcing contracts, people spending 3-4 years in the same work environment is not unheard of. The solution is to change how people feel about their work. A way to tackle this is to rotate staff between assignments, our PSU banks used to do this on a regular basis in the past and we never heard about people complaining of work-life balance out there. New assignments bring new challenges and helps motivate and keep people on their toes.

Then there are the numbers, the actual time you spend on work versus personal activities. Undeniably, Indian IT workers work harder when compared to their Western peers (I'm not even going into whether the hours spent are all productive), but if you compare it to other categories like the Chinese factory worker or the worker in Indian industry, we are a pampered lot, with pay substantially above the national average for working conditions that are far better than the average. For this privilege, there is a price you pay, and that is a choice that each individual makes.

Toshiba Thrive : Comparision with the ipad

People who know me well are aware that I am one of the biggest admirers of the ipad. Though I was very sceptical of the ipad before it launched and openly pooh-poohed it after the unveiling , I had to eat crow once I got my hands on it. I was in love and over the past year and a half, have been dellighted and amazed by the device on innumerable occasions.


But, I'm not one of the ios fanboys, or the more Indian term, a member of the iMafia. I've been using an android phone as my daily driver for the past year and find a lot of areas where Android is far superior to ios. This is reflected in the sales numbers, where android has taken the lead and is pulling away. But, in the tablet market, the ipad is dominant, the 800 pound gorilla in a room full of tarsiers. So, I was very curious to find out why. Are Android tablets really that bad that they haven't been able to make any headway against the ipad? Opportunity came knocking in terms of the Thanksgiving Black Friday sales, where the retailers had heavy discounts on the Android tablets. I was able to pick up a Toshiba Thrive for around 300$. My brother, who lives in Boston, picked it up and I finally got my hands on it last weekend.


The Thrive was(is) one of the most unappealing of the Android tablets. It's bulky(looks like something made in Soviet Russia), was plagued by quality issues at launch and was expensive to boot. A perfect trifecta which caused it to quickly sink to the bottom of the also rans. But, my reasoning went, flaws that are killers at a 500$ price point could be bearable when the price drops to 300. They had also cured the sleep of death issue and it had a few redeeming qualities like a full sized USB, HDMI and SD card slot plus a replacable battery. All these factors made me choose the Thrive over the competition. And the fact that the discounted price was a full 100$ less than the others. Never discount the importance of a good bargain.


The Short Verdict
Now that I have it, what's the verdict. The short answer is that If the ipad 2 is a 10, I'd rate the ipad as a 9. When I first got my hands on the thrive on saturday, my first impression was so negative, that i would have given it a 5. But as I got used to it and understood it a little better, I'll change it to a 6. With the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, which fixes a lot of the issues that have plagues Honeycomb, that'll move to a 7. But, it is a big question mark whether the Thrive will ever get ICS. 


Does this mean that Android tablets have no chance, if even with the latest software, they don't even come close to the ipad? I don't think so. Remember, the Thrive is not even the best tablet, there are tablets like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Asus Transformer Prime that have far better screens and build quality and would rate a 8 or 9 with the ICS build. But, the issue is that Apple is very close to releasing the ipad 3, which going by past history, would rate as a 11 or 12 at the minimum. How will the manufacturer's be able to counter that? I'm glad that it is someone else's problem and I do not envy them.


The Longer Version


Here's the long version of what I thought of the Thrive


Size (B): My brother had bought the original Toshiba case and boy, was it a piece of crap. Contrast to the original ipad case, which is a piece of art and looks as good as new even after 18 months. The case made the already thick tablet even thicker and was a pain to actually use. I got rid of it and found it quite usable without the case. In terms of thickness, it is not too different from the original ipad. The ipad2, however, takes it to a totally new level.

Sound (F C): I have never heard a speaker that is as bad as the Thrive. It gives the word tinny a whole new meaning. I think 2000 rupee mobile phones have better sounding speakers.


UPDATE: I discovered that Toshiba has its sound enhancement on this tablet and be default, the bass is at the lowest level. Once, I turned off the default and turned up the bass, the quality and volume improved significantly.  I'd have given it a B, but toshiba should be ashamed to have set the default this low.


Display (C): I didn't have high hopes for the display as it wasn't an IPS screen. I was pleasantly surprised, as it looked quite nice. Here are a couple of comparisions with the ipad. The ipad has much better viewing angles, though.

Thrive on the left, ipad to the right

 Thrive at an extreme viewing angle

ipad at an extreme viewing angle, is far better

Software (D): There's no other way to put it, Honeycomb is unfinished software and should never have been released. In just a couple of days of usage, I had multiple apps force closing, including standard apps like Music. Performance was very average, and wasn't much faster than my ipad 1G. 


App Selection (D): Android does scale better than ios to higher resolution, but you still need apps that are designed for the larger screen. Simply stretching out the app to the wider screen is not sufficient. A few like Plume had resigned the app to make use of the wider screen, but they were few and far inbetween. I was very surprised to see the Google + app have a lot of issues just displaying the stream.


It wasn't all negative, though. Here's what I liked
SD Card: I was able to pop in the SD card from my camera and view the pictures immediately
HDMI/USB: I connected my wireless mouse and the tablet to my TV and was able to get a fairly good video watching experience
Sadly for the Thrive, I cannot think of many more positives at this point.