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PTCL has made some interesting moves that the amazing community at Telecom Grid Pakistan has been discussing.
First has been a recent announcement via Dawn and other papers that starting from March they will be reducing their broadband charges significantly - Rs.2k for 1Mbps and Rs.5k for 2Mbps.
These are very competitive rates. In our experience with PTCL Broadband, if you can choose to look past the poor customer service and lack of support for small businesses (static IPs etc.) the actual service quality is pretty good. Added to that a good price point and this should be a very nice choice for people whose phone lines can support 2mbps connections etc.
Now they’ve announced the launch of a Broadband Entertainment Portal which gives access to music, movies, sports and more free of cost to PTCL Broadband subscribers.
It seems like the company is picking up, but I’d like to see their triple-play plans to be implemented soon - those plans are quite disruptive.
| Written by Osama A. on 03/1/08 in Telecom |
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March 1st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Very true! I’ve been a subscriber of their broadband service ever since it was launched and have nothing but praise for them. Strange I know, but it’s true.
March 1st, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Their “entertainment portal” at http://entertainment.ptcl.net/ is silly (sorry, silly was the first word that came to my mind). Putting up 40 english movies of VERY low quality (they would probably fit in a DVD or two) on a webserver (with irritating animations around them - but that’s the topic for another rant) does not make an entertainment portal… Worldcall used to do better than that 3 years ago. Most of the sections are still “Coming soon”.
I can (almost) digest the urdu jokes section, but the thing that confused me was the presence of a “Relegious” section - I fail to see how a “Relegious” section is entertainment.
(Do I whine too much?
)
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:06 am
i tried their service for 2 weeks and it’s internet at the crappiest - give wateen/micronet a couple of weeks, they will match/exceed them - ptcl will always be just another mediocre company
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 am
the situation isn’t much better for wateen there are lots of bad reviews about them on some sites
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Due to ptcl’s move there is an immediate tariff reduction from linkdotnet as well http://www.mylink.net.pk/Services/Tariff.aspx
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I would like to point out that most ptcl-dsl-bashers have bad phone connections. They need to get their phone lines checked, or better yet, upgrade to fiber optic lines. I can assure them they would not regret it. Their DSL services runs like a charm on clean phone lines. And their latest reductions are a godsend (especially the Unlimited volume bit).
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
@raza: true, bad connections are to blame a lot of times but i had a super-running micronet connection before - never had any probs and what do u say to a tech support guy who says “connection down hai? aap dekhen aap ke pc main neechay do TV jal rahe hain?” and then says plz hold and then takes 5 mins to tell me how to open the cmd prompt and then says “type karain p-i-n-g localhost, kuch naza aya? sorry is ze zyada main kuch nahin kar sakta”
they messed up my already working connection at the exhange before giving up - in the end i had to switch back to micronet and also had to pay 2 months’ dsl charges since the $@$#@$#@ billed me and would not take it back
March 4th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I am still unable to see entertainment site. tried from wateen and mbl, but cannot open it.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Dude you cant see the portal unless u have PTCL Broadband service…. what would be the point of launching a PTCL broadband portal if everyone could see it
March 4th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
and dude, you aren’t missing much
March 4th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
The bigger question, then, is why are they advertising their 256kbps broadband package through banners INSIDE the portal?
Isnt that counter-intuitive?
March 4th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
lol, good point - but perhaps their portal works on the ptcl/ptcl/13177777 dialup numbers too, and perhaps they are targeting those customers to upgrade?
Since my last comment, they have also fixed the Relegious typo, so someone must be reading this thread, and we can now have religious ‘entertainment’ (their words, not mine) on http://entertainment.ptcl.net/Religious.aspx - after a spell of watching pigs and Nicole Kidman’s thigh on http://entertainment.ptcl.net/Movies.aspx
I wish they put up a hit-counter on both pages!
March 5th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Good point - didnt think of that
March 6th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Dear Mr. Raza Abbas,
I have the same problems with my phone lines that you have mentioned and even my DSL connnection request has been turned down. Can u tell me how to change it to Fibre Optic. What should be fibre optic? the PTCL cable coming from Exchange to the local switch box or also the wire from that switch box to the pole outside my house and what about that copper wire which comes from the outside pole to my phone set.
looking forward for a detailed reply from mr. Raza or anyone having knowledge/experience regarding this.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:41 am
hmmm but I think PTCL services are excelent. 512k on just Rs 1200 with unlimited download. I also enjoyed the entertainment portal, but some more movies must be added.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Hi I think PTCL services are awesome now a days but in movie and songs section, latest material will be added to make it more better
March 16th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
I GUESS PTCL BROADBAND EXELLENT … ENGLISH MOVIES PORTAL … FINE THEY SHOULD ADD LATEST MOVIES :d
March 21st, 2008 at 9:57 pm
yeah its great, i had 256Kb/s i still have it, i am waiting so damn hard n badly for the upgrade to 512kb/s Unlimited, i have no idea when they are gona upgrade me i asked them so many times but they are like its in process. my Total use is to play on Xbox live, some times it lags and some times its all good for all my buddies who join my room, i am gonna check 512 when i get the upgrade if that dint worked fine. which i hope it will… then i am gona go for 1MB/s but still i know 256 is good, 512 will be better though. i still dint get the upgrade PLZ UPGRADE MY CONNECTIONNNNNNNN
March 21st, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Jawad, I can feel the pain
I am battling PTCL to get my connection upgraded these days. The way I see it, they owe each user atleast the 1200 (for the 256kbps they are not giving for this month), which, when multiplied by a few thousand users, becomes a significant amount.
I call them each day, usually for 30 minutes or more, give them the long list of complaint numbers (mine and 2 other colleagues’ who have PTCL) and ‘collect’ excuses and promises.
If they pay a call center guy 20,000, that is almost 1,000Rs per day, or 8 hours. I have made more than 16 x 30 minute phonecalls so far, so at least I have ‘broken even’
I also got in touch with their Broadband manager, Mr. Ali Raza Baloch, on email. Even though he has forwarded my complaint to 2 people in 2 days, there’s no progress… I have explicitly told him that the bad reputation they are gaining by breaking very doable promise of upgrades by 1st March is going to harm their brand - maybe they just don’t care.
My transformation from a very satisfied customer to a frustrated one is documented at: http://www.reallyvirtual.com/tag/ptcl
Another colleague is playing the bad cop, and complained to PTA in writing. The PTA people sent PTCL a notice, upon which, PTCL actually called my friend back and said you will be upgraded by the 21st for sure. It never happened. PTCL had till the 15th of this month to upgrade, I don’t think they’ll be FINED for failing to comply though. They need to be tied up, spanked, thrown in a cage full of monkeys and sent to a slave camp afterwards. Maybe they’ll learn something if they come back :-/
March 27th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Hi, i got my new connection of 512kbps last monday and like everyone else here, I’m too having the same problem with the upgrading of my connection. I’ve been calling a bunch of people for the last 5 days and as expected no +ve result. Today i again called @1236 and the lady said that “most of the people (not all) having this problem will get it solved by 31st of March”. Then i told her that a friend of mine got his connection upgraded 2 weeks ago, this time she didn’t have anything to say
So lets see what happens.
And i agree with Sohaib, they need to be tortured =/
March 29th, 2008 at 10:02 am
PTCL is fraud PTCL is Fraud they say that 256 is changed to 512 K but still not. A month passed from there statement. Its amazing. Is PTCL kidding with the customers or PTCL wants to decline their sale
March 29th, 2008 at 10:11 am
What is the fucking problem with the fucking company of PTCL PtCL said that our package is changed to 256 to 512 but still no further improvement. PTCL is just a chunk for fuck sake fuck off NO OFFENCE
March 29th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Oh, I forgot to update this thread, my connection was graded after constantly nagging the PTCL people, a couple of days after my last comment here. Did a post about it over at my blog. I hear they are giving 30th (that is tomorrow) as the new new date now. Go fax a complaint to PTA instead of bitching about it here - it helps
March 29th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
lol Sohaib Athar hahah
Hey guys Easy man,,, i am also waiting like hell for this,,, its beeen a monthh now ,, anyway i went to isb and i was so sure that the time i will come back my connection will be upgraded and it was not, i called them and some Kashif dude told me that it has been 50% completed u will get ur upgrade within 6 days (6 more days its pissing me off) and some other PTCL dude told me that they are gona upgrade us before 31st of march, this is all computerized no man can do nothing about it the upgrade process is running AREA vise blah blah. anyway i cant wait, as i get my upgrade i am gona ask for 1mbps . lets see yaar,
March 31st, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I ordered for a 512kbps connection on the 6th of march…and ptcl has failed to install my dsl yet.. i was using MAXCOM 256 and i really regret having stopped using that..it was half the speed but heck atleast i had an internet connection…. PTCL SUX ASS they really do.. the phone lines are still ptcl so they know eventually everyone is dependent on them.. i have been calling 1236 almost 3 or 4 times daily and all i get is a lot of excuses and empty promises i called the exchange and they say they dont have any dsl ports left to give new connects…:S wtf? i dont know wat the ptcl management is doing but they really need to get off their asses and do something about it…this is like old times when u applied for a phone connection n ptcl used to go…dabbi nahi hai…tar nahi hai…pole ghar say door hai…etc etc…. they have just given a new paint job on the outside and inside it’s the same fucking ol can of worms… PTCL.. GROW THE FUCK UP AND GET A FUCKING LIFE this is the year 2008 i mean sheeesh. and ptcl will not be an another mediocre company…it already is a really rotten lousy worse-than-mediocre company
April 1st, 2008 at 4:49 pm
my connection was upgraded on 31st march as they promised. yeah it did took me a lot of calls and complaints everyday but finally they did it. A friend of mine is working in ptcl and he said that they announced that they will launch new packages and upgrade previous connections on 1st march because customers were switching to other isps because of their high rates, despite the fact that they wont be able to implement it. This was all done to keep their old customers and attract new ones. They will upgrade ppl who are on 256 but it will take time.
April 1st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
PTCL IS great! it’s aweSOME!!!
April fuckin fools!!!
NO THEY SUCK …i just called 1236 n they say they cant give me my status cuz their lousy system is fucked up and they dont have the status… so will i kindly call em in half an hour till they get their acts together….if they cant manage their own internal systems it’s a fucking miracle how they can manage the fone system of the whole country…n no wonder it’s in such a sorry state…. ah well.. shit happens…and PTCL is the shitiest of em all…
Congratulations PTCL….u give a whole new meaning to the word shitty.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:04 am
your service on every package is totally DAMN or in other words i could say “please shut your network otherwise it will shut by the people…………….
April 5th, 2008 at 2:21 am
they dint upgraded mine yet, they told me “APP KA NET 31 MARCH SEY PEHLAY HO JAYE GA” now they are like u will get the upgrade within 24 hrs, after that u can request for 1mbps. and today they said i forward ur request and it will take 48 hours , man this is so pissing me off right now, still No upgrades nothing…. i wana go for 1mbps and i am waiting for them to upgrade me to 512 first so that i can ask them to upgrade me to 1MBPS, every time i call them tehy ask my name my phone n cell number. and HO JAYE GA HO JAYE GA, bull shit
April 5th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
they are not gonna upgrade my connection i know, every time call them (1236) they are like i will forward ur request by hand . this is the 5th time they are telling me this to wait for 2 more days. its been a month allready. i am so ____ fedup of this every time they are like u will be upgraded in 24hrs then 48hrs and now 2 more days, WHAT THE HELL yaar. if they again failed i will go for some other net
April 5th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Had a 512k connection before, and it was upgraded to 1M. Worked brilliantly…in the beginning…now, speedtest.net’s giving me half the promised 1M speed with download speeds of 400k and less. That sucks. Sometimes, it’s even below 400. I’ve got Wateen running concurrently, and as far as reliability goes, Wateen’s way, way better. At least I get the whole speed I’m supposed to be getting, constantly, and it doesn’t waiver. I’ve been having problems with downloading torrents, playing videos on YouTube, etc where some videos don’t even play and I’m getting sucky download speeds. Thank God, I’ve got something (Wateen) to fall back on. Otherwise, I’d be pulling my hair out from the roots by now! Last time I checked, it takes an entire day to download one 350mb file on PTCL Broadband; something that took no less than 3 hours on Wateen. I could easily download about 3 eps in one day, without any problem. Unfortunately, we only have one wireless router and that’s attached to PTCL’s ADSL router. But when the month’s end swings around, bye bye PTCL!
April 5th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Sorry…that’s no more than 3 hours on Wateen…not “no less than”. Haha! Sorry about that.
April 12th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Student Broadband Package!!!!!
I ordered a 512 package 12 days ago but still did not get it uptill now……….I contacted the DSL officer on nursery exchange but he says he does not have a port to give connections from and still have more than 250 applications pendind so WTF is happening there???
Do someone know the procedure to complain to the higher authorities?????
April 12th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Go to the PTA site, get their fax number - file a complaint - or get agressive on the 1236 representative and ask for someone’s email/cell # .
April 12th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Can`t digest the fact that they don`t have a port in the exchange where there is so much demand for broadband.
April 12th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
they gave me the same reason, and i’ve applied from the 6th of march… it has been more than a month now … and no go… i’ve switched back to MAXCOM 256..they reactivated it in abt 15 mints… atleast i have internet now and a service provider who gives a shit abt customers.
April 12th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
btw mine is gulshan exchange…so thats 2 exchange in karachi in which ptcl(according to them) cannot provide DLS services… they shud put an add in the newspaper or something so that ppl dont bother applying and going thru PISSERY (misery by ptcl which pisses one off imensely) for a new connection in these places.
April 13th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
they upgraded my 256 to 512 on 8th april after LOOOOONG wait. plus they dint even informed me that we upgraded u, i was downloading stuff and suddenly got 65Kb download speed, i asked them if it has been upgraded and they were like no u have still 256, what the crap. lol actually it was 512 but there systems were not upgraded, now i told them to get me 1MBPS on 11th aprl one girl from 1236 told me BHAI BHAI AAP KO ABHI KAR DETI HON, i said what kar deti hon? she said Upgrade. I SAID YA RIGHT, some other operator was like no it takes 7 days blah blah, well lets see if it gets upgraded within 7 days or not. and By the way what Download speed u get on 1MBPS ????
April 13th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Please can some one provide me some links to contact the authorities abt the gravity of the situation.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I subscribed to the PTCL 1 Mbps DSL connection about a couple of weeks ago. After 4 - 5 days of the application a PTCL tech visited my house for the basic installations. 3 - 4 days after that the connection finally started. The only problem was, I was getting only half the speed (508/126). I called up “18″ and they said it would be “resolved” within 24 hours. The 24 hours passed, nothing changed. Upon calling again, I was given a cock-and-bull story of regulations and procedures and that the problem would take by the end of the working week to resolve (which was another 5 days away). After the end of the week, things still remaining the very same, I called up again and this time after getting bounced off from one operator to another, the fifth gentleman(named ‘Mubusher’) that I talked to that day, gave me his “personal guarantee” (for whatever it was worth), that the problem will go away within 3 days. AFTER the 3 days passed and the situation remained the very same as before, I called YET again, and was asked by a gentleman to call again after 30 minutes, which I did, only to be put on hold by a ‘Farhan’ for 15 minutes who eventually got me through to an ‘Usman’ who gave me yet another story about “technical difficulties” as if basic account management is akin to rocket science and brain surgery. This time around I was asked to wait yet another 24 hours with yet another evidently useless “personal guarantee”. All of that now basically means that I was still not getting what I had been paying for, for several days.
In the brief period that I have dealt with “PTCL Broadband”, I have reached a few conclusions:
a) Just like any other local organization in this country, “PTCL Broadband” is being run by a bunch of unqualified non-pofessional morons.
b) Either the staff hired by PTCL is; grossly irresponsible, ludicrously incompetent, or both.
c) Despite all the marketing slogans, “PTCL Broadband” not only doesn’t care about the customers, but actually believes that they are naive and gullible.
After making the above conclusions I decided to cancel my subscription in favour of other available choices for internet connectivity, purely on the bases of ‘customer dissatisfaction’. But after another dozen or so calls I found out that for cancellation I’m apparently supposed to drive their damned modem back to their office (wherever the hell it is) alongwith an “application” for cancellation:
Respected Sir,
Most respectfully I beg to state that…..
I say FUCK that, I’m NOT paying a single rupee, AND I’m not driving to where ever the hell their office is. Instead I’ll KEEP their POS modem and smash it into bits with a hammer to went my frustration. It’s like the old saying; “when in Pakistan, do as the Pakistanis do”. Try and make me pay you bitches.
As for next time, I’d hope to do business with a company that doesn’t employ a bunch of petty thieves and liars. Thank you.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:39 am
@saud…true…but then wat abt u’r fone line? the damn thing is still dependent on PTCfuckinL ..when i asked to cancel my order (after waiting for more than a month n being given the usuall crap from ptcl).. they say… exchange say ja kar karao… WTF?!? wat in the hell r 1234, 18 and all those other PTCL “Helpline” numbers for?? is ptcl being run by a bunch of clueless, bungling semi-moronic idiots or are they just plain lousy corrupt inept assholes? its a wonder that in this day and age such ppl can actually run a huge entity like PTCL and keep it from being completly bankrupt and seriously..considering their service it is really amazing…. i guess it’s all those fone lines…..if only…
P_!_CL —> new logo of ptcl
April 19th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Fahd:
That’s certainly an apt logo for them. And to think that I actually got a new phone line specifically for broadband because my other “digital” phone-line was on an exchange that didn’t support DSL connectivity. 
I mean honestly, am I, for this and ten thousand other reasons, allowed to say that my country sucks? No? Okay, then I wont, but I’m certainly thinking it.
April 19th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Nobody can stop you from thinking whatever you want (saying it is a different matter) but the real question is, if your country sucks, what are you going to do about it?
Actually, besides the horrible customer service and the false promises of upgrades, my PTCL experience has been better than my experience with other ISPs. I would suggest that everyone should spare a few minutes to launch a complaint with PTA (like I did). The PTCL people actually call you back - even if the problem is still not solved immediately, it is a nice change from dialing 1236 and listening to their IVR time out.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Noooooooooooooooooo Saud, fahadm guys im on the same boat man. same thing happend to me. they took 2 months to upgrade me, i was waiting only coz i knew once i get the upgrade there will be no more problems or what ever, but when i got my 1 mb i had teh half of its speed, it just worked fine for ONE day, i called 18 and they were like theres a problem in ur phone line, Other one is asking me to Put the eithernet wire upside down, lol and third one said u will be having no problems browsing/downloading within 24 hrs,, well guess what now they are like theres a problem in ur port any way what i did and how i upgraded my connection is Its ma lil secret ptcl ki aik larki patai us ko kaam thama dia THATS ALL . thats how i got my upgrade, Now what the heck should i do for this phone line problem, dissconection after every 10 minutes of use and now i am getting 127kbps speed on 1mb package, IS THIS SHITY PEINCE OF SHIT WORTH 2000RS PER MONTH
well once i see his supervisor
im goin 2 find him, rip his balls off, feed them 2 him
make him throw up, make him eat them again, shoot him in the
kneecaps, hit him repeatedly in the stomach with a baseball bat,
take a shit on his face and, to finish it all off, get the loudest, rustiest
chainsaw i can find and saw his head off,
thats all… i am so damn pissed off with this service
April 19th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I can not Fucking believe it…………..
I was waited for 10 days for my connection on student package 512 kb and then I went to the Exchange office.The DSL man there told me that he has no ports to offer new connection from and he has more than 250 applications pending.So I dug out the Email ID of the GM operations and Emailed haim abt the situatuion very seriously. His reply came the next day stating that he is now the GM corporate and has forwarded my cocerns to the people concerned. The next this DSL man who was gaiving me the fucking reason came and installed the connection for me.
The story does not ends here………..the next day after getting my confirmed password I noticed a drop in the speed and I checked that the speed was half than the promised. I called the 18 people the fucked with my DSL settings and the spped was eventually reduced to just like a Dial-Up speed and I was getting 5KB downloading instead of 64 KB.Since then about 4 days I have been calling 18 the operators says that ur complain has been forwarded to Islamabad and there is a problem with your port which has to be Refreshed and bla bla…..now the 5 th day and I am fucking still with this speed regreting abt my decesion. The opoerator says that on Monday it will be resolved but I have my doubts.But one thing is for sure the Ptcl people have dissapointed me in a big way.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
My story seems to be like many of u people above. Can somone find a way to complain to their upper administration I think it is the best way to get these jerks listening to yourselves.
Plz if someone knows an alternative way……..share it with us it will be beneficial to many of us.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
If you are a ptcl customer already, launch a WRITTEN complaint with PTA - they are PTCL’s Big Brother (sort of) - this is how I finally managed to upgrade my connection (details on my blog).
If you are not a customer already, I think PTCL reserves the right to not serve you. I was going to get my bandwidth upgraded to 1mbps, but I’m putting it off as I don’t want to risk a nervous breakdown right now.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
In writing u mean through their website??
April 19th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I mean send them a FAX, or send a written application - they will give you a reference number that you can use to follow up, and unlike the PTCL reference numbers, the PTA number is respected by PTCL (or so I experienced).
April 20th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Hi everyone,
I’ve signed up for PTCL this month, using their 2Mbps connection in Islamabad and I have to say that the quality is great.
Before PTCL I was using Dancom DSL for the past 3 years and when Dancom was bought out by Link Dot Net was forced to become a Link Dot Net customer.
Let me just say that Link Dot Net’s service became super crappy right away for me. I live about 200 yards away from my exchange and all of a sudden my connection was always dropping, the modem was losing sync, and packets were being dropped left and right. Link Dot Net’s technicians weren’t skilled at all, and would constantly suggest that I install some different type of anti-virus than the kind I already had (just because they weren’t familiar with McAfee Enterprise edition) and that I needed to change all the copper wiring in my apartment and the wire leading up to the apartment from the phone box outside.
They couldn’t understand that it had been working fine for the past 3 years without any problems and kept sticking to the illogical assertion that overnight my wiring had gone bad and now I needed to replace it.
In all this frustration I just went onto PTCL’s site and signed up for their service. However I hadn’t canceled Link Dot Net yet. 3 days later all of a sudden my Link Dot Net stopped working permanently and I found out that PTCL had switched our ports over to theirs without calling us first.
That same day a friendly and knowledgeable technician showed up to do the install. We told him that we weren’t sure if we wanted to go with PTCL yet and that we might stay with Link Dot Net because we had heard a lot of bad things about PTCL also. Since it was the weekend he said that our ports couldn’t be changed back to Link Dot Net until Monday anyways so he gave us a free modem to try out and put in his own PTCL password as our login and didn’t make us sign any sign-up forms. He said that we should try out PTCL for 2 days and that he’d be back Tuesday to see if we wanted to use PTCL or not. If we didn’t, he’d just ask for the modem back and switch our ports back over to Link Dot Net.
Well when he came back on Tuesday we had our minds made up! The PTCL speed and reliability were so much better than Link Dot Net’s that we never looked back and are now happy PTCL customers.
There is one and only one complaint that I have so far though — as some others have mentioned sometimes certain YouTube videos just won’t load. Everything else on that page will load, even the video player, but the video just won’t start streaming. I wasn’t sure if this is a PTCL specific complaint or something due to Pakistani censorship.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Lets see what happens to my complain tomorrow…………..I bet they will be short of excuses.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:03 am
What actually is the point of PTCL launching all these services when very few people in the country will actually be able to utilise them. In our area of Karachi PTCL championed that we will have the latest Fibre-optic network. Great I thought. How wrong was I!!
The telephone line was so bad with noise that we could not talk to anyone…..then someone somehow cut the cable and PTCL did not have any spares to repair it. It took them EIGHT months to repair.
Having had my complaint letter published in the DAWN newspaper, our line was temporarily (for 12 months) re-routed from three streets away to get it working on the morning of the day my letter was published slating Etisalat and PTCL. So they do read the national press.
This line was broken only couple of weeks later and thats how it remained. We got charged line rental every month, which we stupidly paid. We even got charged for Pakistan Package, despite not having a working line for almost a year, again stupidly my wife paid it.
Last month we wrote to the local exchange asking them to disconnect our line. Again on the morning of letter being received I get a call on my cellphone from the supervisor at our local exchange saying if we do not disconnect he will have our line working within couple of hours!!! Amazingly the line engineers, the same guys who could not fix our line for over a year, came along within an hour of the call and fixed our line!!! What amazes me is that if they could fix it within minutes of us wanting to disconnect, why did they not do this for over a year. I suppose this is down to someone senior at PTCL actually kicking some ass to have things done properly. Fair dues to the guy, he gave me his direct line number and assured me that if ever anything goes wrong I should contact him direct. What really peeved me off was that the same engineer who had been coming to our house for over a year making excuses why he could not fix the line manage to do it within minutes of someone senior actually kicking his backside.
Now the line has been working for three weeks without a problem….just some minor noise issues on the line. So I thought lets get a PTCL broadband connection, which I have been wanting for over a year, (we live in a new area of DHA, where no other ISP will provide ADSL service, not even wireless!!!!), so I ring PTCL and lo and behold they tell me that my excahnge being this fantastic new Fibre-optic network is not currently geared up to receive any broadband!!!!! Absolutely gobsmacked! What do I need to do to get some simple basic services in Karachi.
I’m used to speeds of 20Mb/s for my connection in the UK. Here in Pakistan I cannot even get the most basic connection. And PTCL is advertising their fantastic Portal of everything on demand. Get REAL PTCL & Etisalat. Etisalat could not get away with these antics in their home country or elsewhere. But they do in Pakistan. Whats the point of having fantastic Advertising and Marketing campaigns when the service does not work.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:39 am
hey guys i just found out on another forum that ptcl charge taxes on their dsl packages n details are like this:
there are two taxes which are levied on the PTCL Bill
1. Sales Tax:
Sales Tax is quite simple for instance
Rs.170(Line Rent) + 1199(DSL Rate) + (Telephone Usage if any) + 15% of the total of previous sum = Rs1574
2. Wealth Tax:
this is levied if ur total bill is more than Rs1000 than Rs 50 is added in the bill and if more than Rs 2000 than Rs 100 is added in the bill so if ur using ur ptcl for DSL only then ur bill will be Rs 1624
So is this true or what?
May 10th, 2008 at 10:51 am
lol PTCL simply fucking the nation :))
their rate are really high and where is LDN and wateen they the heck they are doing who gonna remove the monopoly and make them to think to make their service better.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I have used it, basically portal consist of:
- Movies broadcasted illegally in choppy and minuscule format.
- Most of the pages are under construction.
- Content is of poor quality consisting of cheap jokes and bootleg music.
- Header is so huge it take half the page height.
- Too many clicks to see a particular content.
Reasons:
1. Expected from Pakistani company
2. Expected from Pakistani people
3. Expected from PTCL
4. Nepotism
Telenor Pakistan & Ufone has VAS too which shows old content, stale news, no replies, etc etc.
Their reasons:
1. Expected from Pakistani company
2. Expected from Pakistani people
May 10th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Right aa. Let us rip off their legs for ripping us off. Now where did I put my chainsaw…
May 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I had a bad experiance with PTCL I like wateen