Learning is an Art

I have been thinking for a while to write about my experiences but was refraining from this for some reason or the other but today something happened that I can’t hold my anger against the shity policies of companies in India; I will illustrate three experiences of my life which forced me to believe that India is still way behind when it comes to serving customers and listening to there problems and promptly providing the solutions.

So I will start with my latest problem which I am facing with Tata Indicom broadband connection; I took a plan of RS 1300 6GB combo so it was all goody goody initially when I didn’t used much of my allotted usage of 6 GB free usage which I had; than this month I had to download some linux operating system from internet that started the nightmare experience it was 3.7 GB of download still less than my free usage and the very next morning I got a call that you have exceeded your credit limit of RS 1700 and you need to make a payment of 3100 I am still trying to figure out from where the hell that figure of RS 1700 came from; if I do a flat conversion of 6 GB of free usage with their rate 0.9/MB it leads out to some where around RS 5000 I was totally surprised with this and in next two days my line was barred; I didn’t had a option there I went to the office of tata indicom and made the payment of RS 3100 and it took them more than a day to restore my line.
I haven’t even realized that my lines are fully working I got another call next day asking me to make a payment of RS 1500 and since I was afraid that my line might get disconnected again which may cause another day of work getting lost so I made the payment immediately but I was even not able come out of two back to back payments I got another call from them today that I have exceeded my credit limit again and I need to make a payment of RS 2300 I was so badly pissed of I called the customer care and asked what the hell is going on and he had more shocking news for me sir your billed amount is RS 7000 and your unbilled usage is RS 11000 I was shocked WTF and than I asked him to check again than he started saying actually the correct unbilled usage will start reflecting in 48 hours that amount is not correct that was some respite for me.
I was told I can check my unbilled usage from tataindicom site but there another tragedy stuck me I had registered to that site already but never received the first time pin I told the same thing to customer support executive, he tried to reset password but it was in vein he kept getting that customer not registered and I kept getting you are already registered and you can not registered again.
He told me sir you will have to write a mail; now I have to write two mails the first one which I had already written for increasing my credit limit and another to fix my account on tataindicom.
I hope they will not f*** any more as I have already given up with them. I am planning to change ISP any suggestions are welcome.

I think this story has taken quite out of me I will write other two experiences some other day, keep watching this space for more bitter realities of customer support in India.

For this week only, Atlassian is offering a special 5-user “starter” license of JIRA and Confluence for only $5 each. They’re calling it the Atlassian Stimulus Package and it’s a great way of supporting small teams and small businesses in this difficult economic environment. Best of all, they will be donating every penny to charity, so please help them spread the word!

The Atlassian Foundation is donating all proceeds to Room to Read, a charity that helps the world’s future entrepreneurs by building libraries and schools for children in developing nations.

Get all the details at www.atlassian.com/starter. Hurry, offer ends on 24 April 2009.

Please spread the word as much as possible.

I would like to congratulate Atlassian for the great effort.

Before starting on this I would like to than Atlassian team for starting personal licenses for users. I would say its really a big thing for me as it saves me a lot time going to atlassian site and downloading license after every one month.

So now what do I do with my personal Jira installation :

Tracking my own progress on things: My jira Installation has project name learning which I have components as shown below so the differnet sources of my learning has become components of my jira project learning and not forget the title of my Jira installation is Personal life Jira

Personal Jira Components

Similarly versions are quarters of year and I create few Jira issues for each components each quarter like say I have a traget of reading two books each quarter, write ten blog posts each quarter; Jira helps in setting my personal goals.

We all agree that putting down things on paper or in genral documenting it somehwere helps alot especially putting down what we want to do and what we are suppose to do. People might say Jira might be to big application for managing personal taks but in my humble opinion its not about tool its more about the intent.

Developing some plugins and customization for Jira: Being a developer at heart I was not able to refrain my self from trying my hands on Jira’s plugin development environment with so much help available its pretty easy to get started though maven may suck you at start but once set it works as bread and butter.

So Jira as whole as impacted my learning process; I would like to thank Atlassian for providing such a nice tool and great licensing options.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with Atlassian by any means.