airtel and net neutrality? dream on.
okay. i’m not a fan of airtel’s ethics. i think we have that established by now. they, obviously, are no fans of mine either.
but this time, they’re just being arseholes. isps across the world have gotten flak for it, but airtel decided to jump on a bandwagon that’s been tipped over several times already. do they not do their research?
rant being over, here’s how their latest rubbish works… when a user types in a web address that doesn’t exist (i’m using AirtelIsRunByRetards.com as an example), your browser should take you to a page that says the web address can’t be found. what airtel has done is this: they take that page and chuck it out the window (ha ha! pun!); and show you their own page, with their own ads, run by a company called “on speed.” well, the r&d team at airtel is definitely on something, but i’m guessing it’s a more malicious drug.
nice work. what’s next? insert their ads into search results? net neutrality, scumbags. look it up.
disclaimer: i don’t normally use internet explorer, but a screenshot about crap deserves a crappy browser. get firefox.
in hindsight
this post was originally written way back in may. but i held it back for various reasons. not anymore. so, the person i’m talking about here can stuff it up their crotch, if they have any issues.
i have an issue with speaking hindi. i don’t. not because i can’t… but because i’m not good at it. but i have a bigger issue with people who’ve been speaking it all their lives, and then “forgetting” it as a result of meeting a phirang. and an even bigger issue with people who try to shove hindi down my throat (or pull it out of it?)…
yesterday, i came across both. almost simultaneously.
the first was this person who’s so rude and thick-skinned, it isn’t funny. and on top of that, extremely daft and in denial of the fact. probably grew up in jalandhar or some hick town, didn’t speak a word of english until reaching delhi, and dehaati at the core. but of course working with a bunch of phirangs changes all of that doesn’t it? get a fancy half-accent, learn some posh words, make some others up, and speak hindi like one of them. nam-ass-tay, i say.
and while trying to deal with that one, i get a call from my not-so-favourite company, airtel. well, he said he was from airtel… but was one of those collection agency cons. why don’t they just say they’re calling on behalf of airtel? too demeaning? anyway, this bugger goes on to whine that i should pay the money via him, instead of paying directly to airtel, and he was downright pissing off. i asked for someone who speaks english, and airtel being a big company and all that, someone in the company would speak english. but all i get is a “kaisa aadmi hai tu? hindi nahin aata?” excellent way to keep your customers happy, i think.
worm steals spacebar off airtel keyboard
the guys at spamco are getting pretty high tech they now have robots working for them, checking to see if there’s any abnormal activity going on with my computer…
Dear Customer,
Our robot has detected an abnormal activity from your IP adress on sending e-mails. Probably it is connected with the last epidemic of a worm which does not have official patches at the moment.
We recommend you to install this patch to remove worm files and stop email sending, otherwise your account will be blocked.
Customer Support Center
there’s something oddly familiar about this… it reads like the emails i get from airtel, when i give them hell…
Wevaluetherelationshipbuiltwit
hyouandtrustthatoneodd,
unfortunateincidentwill not come in the way of this association. May we
reiteratethatweshareyouranguish and have taken adequate action to
ensure the non-occurrence of the same in future.[sic.]
that’s the cookie cutter apology off an actual email from my favourite phone company of all time.
for heaven’s sake, even the robots at the penis-enlargement mail order department are smarter than the retarded apes who work at india’s largest telephone company.
airtel: expressing myself
we just took up a new place for our studio. (yet another) barsati on the the 4th floor, but this one has ample space and sunlight and fresh air. and i’ve got a decent landlord. and it’s peaceful. and i didn’t have to go through the neighbourhood scum broker. all in all, a good deal.
the tough part came around when i had to shift the landline from the old place. it took the retards at airtel 12 days to shift a phone line a hundred metres. first, they misheard 20 “d for delhi” as 20 “b for bombay.” then, inexplicably, they decided to make an entry in their records that i asked for a further delay in shifting the line. somewhere along the line, some illiterate call-whore thought it’d be well within my rights to make as many calls as i wanted during the delay, and that airtel would foot the bill.
sure i’d asked him if i could do that, but what sort of lame-ass company hires morons who decide to be generous with their employer’s money?
and all this while, all the furniture was already shifted to the new place, and i was sitting in the old place with a comp on the floor. one’s ass tends to hurt like a bitch after a week or so of sitting cross-legged. and by the tenth day, i’d lost my patience. a day full of heavily abusive calls to supervisors, team leaders, technical executives and other fancy titles later, i finally got the phone shifted. and my language! i’m surprised that they didn’t just slam the phone down on me. but if they’d tried, there would have been blood all over the place.
the phone finally got shifted last friday.
and this morning, some idiot wakes me up to tell me he wants to come over and shift my phone. from 20 d to 20 b. because that’s what’s written in their records.
i don’t think he’ll be calling me again. seriously, if you don’t want me to say nasty things about you and your mother, don’t wake me up before 11am.
<aside>the title of this post is based on airtel’s slogan: express yourself. it worked for me. reliance’s slogan has always been misunderstood by me. my terrible hindi translated “kar lo duniya mutthi mein” as “do the world into the ground.” never understood why they’d take on such a negative sounding catch-phrase.</aside>
