Sify Broadband Business Associate

A great example on how blackmailing goes in the corporate world. And even more incredible is the fact that Sify knows about all this and still decides to do nothing!

A quote from the Sify Broadband Forum:

Guess what guys. Fresh from the experience of my IP being blocked by Sify's SAM server for some unexplainable reason, I had the fortune of being blocked by my Sify BA 

What happened was that my account was to expire on Dec. 23 evening so I renewed it online a few hours before the expiry. A while later a guy from the BA came and asked for the account renewal cheque. I told him I had already renewed online but he wouldn't go away easily and made an uneasy face.

Anyway my account got automatically renewed and the internet worked fine until the afternoon of the next day. At this time suddenly I started facing upto 80 % data packet loss. So I called up the BA (just 1 mobile number is there to contact one guy) and what does he tell me, he tells me that he will call me back after 10 minutes and explain it to me because he's in an important meeting.

After pacing around impatiently thereafter for some time I got very mad, called the BA again and almost screamed at him that I'll complain to Sify Cust Care that he hd blocked me. He naturally denied it and kept on telling me to wait a little while longer till his "important" meeting is over.

I kept down the phone and then it struck me that maybe this guy is miffed because he doesn't get his commission from Sify when I renew online as he's supposed to and thus prefers a cheque.

After a while I got a call from Mr. BA ranting to me about why Sify has reduced rates recently to reduce service tax or some sh*t and other rants about money he has to pay to police and the municipality for getting access to poles etc.

It finally transpired that he had started to levy a maintenance charge of Rs. 210 for all new renewals/connections. And he told me that my connection would be normalised "automatically" by a "software" after I paid up the Rs. 210.

So this time I had been effectively blocked by the BA for bypassing him and not paying him the maintenance charge about which I had no clue when it was the BA's responsibility to inform me about it instead of being a bully and blocking me  . Even the collection guy whom I had turned away the previous day hadn't told me anything about it.

And how did the bully BA block me? He didn't block my IP as I tried another IP and it didn't work too. So looks like blocked my MAC address but I don't know yet know how to change the MAC address. Moreover he didn't even block me totally but looks like he reduced my bandwidth from his side to such levels that 80 % of my outgoing data was being lost.

And what do you know, as soon as I paid up the maintenance charge my connection normalised in a flash :-|