Increasing Reliance Netconnect speed, Online Transaction failure and Customer Care woes

Since my data card limit was over, so i got Reliance Netconnect from a colleague, thought it might come handy while posting “IP Subnetting - The easy way” at Prohack and some simple surfing, I was already skeptic of taking the data card actually as I previously had a very bad experience with Reliance Netconnect  and doubted if their broadband services are any good. I bet my MTS Mblaze makes it eat dirt any day ,but I had no option at that moment and thought , lets give the fucker another chance.

Ah well..you can say it was more than bad. Firstly, the data card has pretty bad speeds (~30 KBps) and then connection dropping issues. Mind you, I live in Delhi NCR and get full signal bars all the time on Reliance Netconnect Broadband + but still it barely managed to load Facebook. I thought, why not to change the DNS, on experimenting, I found Open DNS and Verizon DNS to be the most stable of all and I got a speed boost of 90-100 KBps : ]]

Here is how you can Increase speed of Reliance Netconnect Broadband + datacard -

Plugin your data card, launch application, go to settings, click on edit.

Click on advanced and put DNS server IPs. I found Verizon 4.2.2.2 //4.2.2.1 and Open DNS  208.67.222.222 // 208.67.220.220 work best for me. You can also try Google DNS 8.8.8.8 // 8.8.4.4 . Experiment and pick your choice.

Once done, click OK, save it and connect. you will get improved speeds..The whole process makes me wonder why Reliance’s default DNS is so slow . Do they even use their datacards at their home ? :|

On to my story, Since, even after changing DNS, the speeds were not good enough for me, so I thought, why not to recharge my MTS Data card online and then use it.  Instantly I opened MTS website and after entering required details, transferring money to MTS from my online account, the page hanged and session was timed out. Responding to my sense of deja vu, I checked the data card and found it was not sending/receiving any data. the fucker dropped the connection just I when i was about to get my transaction completed.

I guess it took its revenge :X

I immediately emailed to MTS customer care/RechargeItNow/Bank customer care and I have *yet* to receive a helpful followup message on email. I contacted MTS customer care on phone and entered 1,1,1,1,,1 waited for 2 minutes 46 seconds (yeah..i timed it) , the automated IVR said “after several tries you have not entered any number, so we are transferring your call to our expert” . Well..it wasn't my fault, again, there is some fault in their system as I tried 3 different valid MDN numbers later on and I got the same result. Nevertheless, I was put on call with an *expert* to whom I explained my issue and asked for escalation matrix, the details of email ID and in simple words, “what to do in case of transaction failure, the MTS way ? ”

The result was flabbergasting, the CCE spoke in an english which by all means was incomprehensible to me, I politely disconnected the call and then fumed for 2-3 minutes while looking at the Reliance datacard.

Protip : If you  hate someone, gift him a Reliance datacard and watch him cry tears of blood :P

In the meantime i am still waiting for a positive response from my bank/MTS/rechargeitnow.

That was last night and I guess i have been outsmarted by a pathetic Reliance Netconnect.