Tata Docomo penalised

Tribune News Service

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Chandigarh, April 7

Tata Docomo was held guilty of deficiency in services and causing mental and physical harassment to a complainant by the UT Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum. The forum directed the company to pay Rs 5,000 compensation for deficiency in services.

Tata Docomo has also been directed to pay Rs 3,000 to the complainant towards litigation expenses. Complainant Raman Awasthi, a resident of Sector 16, Panchkula, had a Docomo post-paid connection. The package was under the monthly rental scheme of Rs 222 with Rs 49 as SMS pack. He requested the company on August 4, 2014 for closure of the services, was given to an executive of Tata Docomo upon which he was informed that as his connection was a corporate connection, it would be difficult to stop the services and asked the complainant to convert the post-paid connection in to a pre-paid one. On August 5, 2014, the complainant received a call from retention department, confirming that his request for closure of post-paid number has been forwarded and it would be converted into a pre-paid number within 72 hrs for which no document was required. However, till August 15, 2014 nothing was done by the company, the complainant again took up the matter with the customer care executive of the company, upon which he was assured that needful would be done within 48 hours. When the number was not de-activated in next 48 hours, the complainant sent an e-mail dated August 19, 2014 and requested them to stop the services of his other four numbers also due to their poor services, to intimate the outstanding amounts and the procedure for porting of numbers. Thereafter, vide e-mail dated August 20, 2014 the complainant was asked to pay outstanding amount of Rs 971 and to submit a recent photograph, ID proof and residence proof. Accordingly, an amount of Rs 971 was paid but with a view to avoid cancellation of aforesaid post-paid connection, an executive of the company, returned the same on the ground that as the said documents were not issued by the Government of India, the same were not acceptable. Thereafter, the complainant sent a number of e-mails to the company for closure of his connection, but to no avail as every time the same were reverted in a very irresponsible manner.

Tata Docomo stated in a reply to the forum that the services were disconnected on September 17, 2014 and waiver amount of Rs 305 was also posted to the complainant’s account and the confirmation of the same was given to the complainant vide e-mail. It has been urged that there was some technical issue faced by the company which was beyond their control, therefore, the complaint of the complainant could not be entertained in time.

The forum stated in the order that in view of the matter, the act of issuing bill even after the request for cancellation of the connection, later the reversal of wrongly generated bill of Rs 305 specifically after filing of the present complaint, non-providing the evidence regarding the technical issue certainly prove deficiency in service on the part of the telecom operator, which caused immense physical and mental harassment to the complainant.