It is amazing how some of the so called telecom giants in India still dont get the benefits of Internet. The GSM operators in India still have their nose up in the air.
On one hand, Hutch, Airtel, and others charges about 50 bucks every month for a detailed bill. As a matter of fact, that is the only way to find out the breakup of local and non-local charges under the “Call Charges” heading of the normal statement.
I assume printing and couriering of these bills to customers is a big cost to bear for these companies.
Now the great part is that with Hutch(I dont know about others), you can go to their web site and view the detailed bill for free.
All this is nice … but here comes the fun part .. Hutch even has an option to email the bill to you as soon as it is raised(this feature is called eBill). But wonder of wonders, Hutch still wants to charge you half the printing cost(about 20 bucks) for mailing it to you! On one hand, you are reducing their considerable monthly cost by accepting bills by forest-friendly email, and on the other hand they still want to skim you off.
Why does this one email a month cost you 20 bucks? ICICI bank on the other hand mails me a daily bank balance statement(for my current account though) for free, and only sends the the paper statement once a month. On top of it, at the year end, it sends me the whole years transactions in CSV format so that I can reconcile my account books.
Shows how two different service providing entities, have learnt to embrace the new paradigm.
