Here’s why PTCL is Pakistan’s worst internet service provider

PTCL, which has been rechristened as “Perennially Tortured Consumers’ League”, for reasons explained later, makes sure that its customers get the worst services.

My bad luck started five years ago, when I obtained a telephone number (051-28***24) from PTCL, on my younger brother’s name.

The services were almost always poor, with frequent disconnections, low browsing speed and crushingly low download speed. I hope and wish they maintain a log of the complaints received for each number. If such a log exists, it shall speak for itself.

Not until three months back, after several complaints, was I told that my connection was compatible with the optic-fibre option, which I had opted for, and that I had never received the 4MB internet that I was being charged for. I have on average paid 24-2600 rupees to PTCL, chiefly for internet services, because the phone is hardly used once or twice in a month for local calls.

Which means I was being charged for a service that was not being offered to me. Is not that tantamount to fraud, and a breach of trust?

I must take legal counsel on that.

After knowing that my landline had not been compatible, I asked for assistance in resolving the issue, because internet is very important for the work I do. I was asked to visit the PTCL Customers Care Centre in Islamabad.

On the instruction/advice of the PTCL employee, my telephone number was ‘made compatible’ with Optic Fibre service, or so I was told. My number was changed to 051-23***40, and I was promised robust, uninterrupted, services.

Almost three months have passed since then, and there has not been a week when I have needed internet and not complained to PTCL, requesting them to resolve the frequent disconnection issues that I have been facing. In fact, the number of frequent disconnections has increased considerably since then.

The response to my complaints have been false assurances, gimmickry of words, lip-service, half-efforts, or, outright silence. After almost every complaint made through 1218, I also sent messages to PTCL through its Facebook page, and Twitter handle (screenshots of which are readily available). So pathetic is the PTCL’s customer service that one of my complaints was responded to after 5 days (120 hours), after several reminders and ‘hyper’, frantic, calls. This is despite of the fact that every time I was promised a ‘quick resolution’ within 48 hours.

Also surprising is the fact that despite of no efforts being made, or despite of the service not improving, I continue receiving automated calls telling me PTCL’s records showed that my issue is resolved. Are the employees fooling their higher ups? Or are the higher ups lax, inefficient, feeding off the tax-payers’ hard earned money?

Today is the Sixth (6th) day of my latest complaint (#54). My internet gets disconnected after every few minutes. Adding insult to the injury, the ugly website of PTCL, offering ‘packages’, pops up, whenever the connectivity returns, replacing my open windows. The PTCL website forcibly open for three to four times every time, after the connection restores. This constant popping up of the PTCL website has made me hate the brand, as if the services were not pathetic enough already.

Now, having lost all hope, and in a sheer act of frustration and a sense of being let down, despite of me paying all my bills on time, I plan soon to burn in front of the national press club all the bills that I have paid, their telephone set, their modem, and an effigy of the PTCL chairman, which would symbolize the entire inept, dumb, useless, parasitic, leech-like, management and foot workers, who are sucking the life out of the nation’s prime telecommunication organization. I hope to gather other affectees of PTCL’s criminal inefficiency, and after the protest demonstration, which will have wide coverage – we will ensure that it does – we will think how to legally pursue this case further.

Enough is enough.