We all know how badly some of the biggest companies have fallen when they get greedy. Well, one of the biggest telecommunication company in Pakistan, PTCL is getting more and more greedy by the second. PTCL Broadband or Broadband Pakistan as they like to call it now, has countless users, they even bought out MaxCom and ported their clients. It is by far the biggest internet provider across the country, I myself have been a patron for over 3 years. The service was questionable but not bad overall. All hell broke lose last month when PTCL announced a download cap on their High-Speed packages. I was appalled by the announcement, so was the rest of the nation. The cap was that people with 4Mb or more will have to limit their downloads to 50GB per month, otherwise they had to pay an extra RS. 1000, which meant if someone had a 4MB package which costs Rs. 2000 per month, they’d have to pay Rs. 3000 if they downloaded more than 50GB.
Not only that, but the ONLY way to know how much of that quota you’ve used is by calling the notoriously hated number 1218 and asking the operator what the usage is. Seriously PTCL? You come up with a ridiculous quota out of nowhere, no warnings whatsoever, and the only way to find out the usage is by calling the number that isn’t answered in more than fifteen minutes? Even after it is answered, you get “greeted” by one of PTCL’s highly paid employees who are obviously happy with their jobs and can’t wait to put the phone down on you?
A lot of the long-time customers are switching to other ISPs such as LinkDotNet, Worldcall, Wi-Tribe and QuBee. What else would you expect from people if you screw them out of something like that?
Here’s a funny but true story of my own
I called up 1218 to find out my download usage, I dialed the Broadband Extension and waited for the operator. After a good 20 minutes(I kid you not), a highly drunk dude answers. I ask him to tell me the quote, he types a lot of stuff and tells it to him. After that I ask him if there’s any way I could cancel my subscription, he tells me to “CALL THE TELEPHONE EXTENSION”. As weird as it mind sound I dialed the telephone extension, after like a minute of waiting(figures), a very sober guy told me to “CALL THE BROADBAND EXTENSION” to know how I can unsubscribe. Pretty funny eh? This is how bad PTCL has it and this is how the huge number of fans are slowly going to digress. Here’s another uhappy customer switching, cheers!
For details on this new tariff, read here.