Srinagar, Feb 20: With frequent cross-connections in its mobile telephony becoming a problem for customers, the disgruntled Aircel subscribers today threatened to move to court against the company.
 The customers told Greater Kashmir that the cross-connections, which had become a norm with Aircel mobile service, had caused huge concern in them for a number of reasons.
 “Cross connection not only restrains you from talking to your intended person, it also let you encroach into some others domain thereby pervading his/her privacy, which also holds true about you when some other is calling to his/her intended person,” they said.
 “You try any number there are 99 per cent chances that you get connected to some other and listen to their talks. Similarly, your talks, don’t know, how many people would be listening unwittingly,” said a subscriber.
 Muhammad Latief, a subscriber said: “We are embarrassment because of such service. Every time you get connected to a wrong number you need to explain them that it was not done deliberately. More concern is that whenever we make a call and get cross connected to a wrong number we lose our balance/money,” they added.
 The customers said that such cross connections led to the revealing of many personal conversations that one did not like to be revealed. “Few days back I was talking to my friend and suddenly she was nowhere and I could hear two guys talking about something personal to them. When they dropped I got connected to some other guy. The connection with my friend was totally cut off. So I had to drop and dial again,” said a customer.
 “This way many times during these days I have heard the conversations of other people who did not know that I was listening to them. This I think is quite unethical and a sort of intrusion in someone’s personal life,” he added.
 The customers said that even after making several complaints with the service providers their pleas are not responded well. “The number for customer care with the company is always either engaged or congested. After long try when you are able to get through you are never given satisfying information about the problem. The reply that they provide does not suffice for the worst experience that we face,” said the customers.
  “We cannot understand how they claim to be the best service providers when they provide such bad services which can surely put them at the place of the worst service providers,” they added.
 Commenting about the problem an Aircel spokesperson said, “Such problems can sometime happen with any network. But no such thing has come to our notice till now. We have not received any major compliant as such specifically about the cross connections.”
 He said: “There can be sometime some minor connectivity problems but it is not the regular feature.”

Lastupdate on : Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:00:00 IST