Excitel on ventilator. Review on Excitel Broadband

I took Excitel connection when they were just starting in Delhi and slowly growing, it was available in 6-7 locations then and my only option that time was Excitel, MTNL and DEN. I had troubles with my MTNL connection and I decided to go for Excitel. I put up my request online and a person came 2 days later and asked me about my requirement. As I already had my router and in Excitel website they had mentioned 500 installation charges(depending on the LCO) and no extra hidden charges, I was happy to give him 500 bucks but he asked me 500 + 300 to configure my router. I called up Excitel sales team and they weren't much of any help and they told me to give 800 as they will set it up very properly.

Though I didn't want to give any more than 500 I paid 800 next day to that same person since I really wanted internet setup soon. 1st 2-3 months were great. I had literally no down time. Then came few hiccups which was solved in a couple of days after raising tickets to Excitel care. My troubles started in 2018 October when my connections were getting disconnected every few minutes. In the logs I could see minimum 200-300 disconnections daily. I was very busy then and had no time to troubleshoot and I let it slide. Things got worse in November 2018 and December 2018. I captured some of the packets and realised that the server was sending PPP termination request every now and then back to my router. Disconnections were at peak, nearly 900-1000 disconnections a day, so 3 months was pure torture where Excitel wasn't helpful at all.

Local LCO(Friends Fiber Net) were clueless and they suggested that I should go for Fiber connection. I was waiting for a reply from Excitel and after a few days of constant nagging I got a call from a technical team of Excitel, finally that person sounded a little knowledgeable as he was able to understand PPP disconnections and packet capture sessions. He also unofficially suggested that I should get Fiber connection but he never forced me. I thought I had had enough for 3 months and I decided to get Fiber connection, for that I had to pay them 1500 (non refundable) as it was not available officially in my location and they were giving me on my private request. The experience ticket that I raised in Excitel awarded me just 8 days of extension for my 3 months of 3rd degree digital torture. I was not happy at all but like we all know I had no choice. Fiber experience was good, I was able to atleast use my ASUS 68U router to its decent capacity. It worked well for nearly 6-7 months and then in July 2019 my ONU stopped working.

The same person who installed Fiber came to check the issue after 3-4 days of registering a ticket. He 1st asked me whether I make Excitel bill payments online? When my answer was affirmative he told me that I should pay bills offline in cash to them and only then they will be coming to check the issues. Also he asked me 1000 Rs to change the ONU and I told him that I couldnt pay him again since I paid him 1500 only 6-7 months back. Then he told me he can't be of any help since those were chinese products they don't have any warranties. I somehow convinced him to reduce the rate to 800 and I paid him 700 with the promise of paying him 100 with the next bill in cash. He changed the ONU with a new one, he took the old one but I didn't care (though I paid for that too) Things started working again but only lasted a month. Since 25th August 2019 my internet has stopped working again, frequent calls to LCO didn't help, nor did calls to Excitel. LCO are asking money to check the issue, Excitel is keeping the ticket as Partner Pending. So for the last 9 days I have no internet at home ticket no. 2134935, which I have already paid for. LCO is demanding cash for fixing the issue as well as for all future bill payments.

Excitel is hiding behind Partner. I have no regrets but I have decided not to pay them anymore and waiting for them to come to their senses.

Update: 13/09/2019 It's been over 18 days since the internet connection went down. No updates on the ticket raised with Excitel, no calls, no visit from anyone from the Excitel or the local LCO. The ticket is still showing 'Pending Partner'. Tomorrow my internet validity is getting over, I hope they will refund me for the 20 days of no connection, I am not keen on having my validity extended unless I don't have to recharge and I will be getting 10 days extra as compensation, so 30 days of free Internet without recharging. I will keep updating this post, negative or positive, in the coming days.