After moving to Bangalore in October, 2006 from New Delhi, I applied for a broadband connection from Tata Indicom (big mistake).

After applying, I was told that the connection will be provided to me within a week, but I got the broadband connection after 4 of those “so called” one week.

Even after paying the advance rental for 4 months to avoid paying the installation charges, I was charged the installation charges. Took some shouting and abusing from me for them to return the installation charges, which took around 2 months to get processed.

Now the real horror started, which I can term as a big pain in ass and waste of time. The connection used to be down most of the time of the month and the major chunk of my mobile phone bill was going on calls complaining and abusing people at the customer service of tata indicom broadband.

This did not happen on one occasion but numerous occasions throughout my broadband service term with tata indicom. I have even forgot counts of the problems which I had.

I will let you guys know the most recent problem which frustrated me so much that I decided to end the service from tata indicom as I prefer staying without a internet connection rather than availing the service from these worthless people who do not know how to serve the customer.

1. I was on leave for Diwali holidays and was in my hometown. I came back on 7^th of November and found out that my internet connection was not working (nothing unusual). Being a weekend, I decide to call them on Monday.

2. On Monday 10^th of November, I gave then a formal call and logged a complain request with them to fix the interconnection. I was given an assurance of 24 hours for the internet connection to be fixed.

3. After 2 of those 24 hours passed with no response from their backend team or any contact from their customer service, I felt I should call them and throw in some abuses to get the connection fixed. I did that religiously and was again given an assurance that the complain will be forwarded to the backend team and will be attended on urgent basis. I knew very well that I will end up abusing them again after 24 hours as I had prior experience of this on the numerous occasions when my connection was down.

4. After another 3 of those 24 hours passed, I thought I would call those idiots at the customer service desk of tata indicom and show my undying love for them. After showing a little of my love to them, my call was escalated to a so called supervisor (another worthless guy with low self esteem). After listening to his explanation, I felt like showing my love to him but restrained myself as I though this guy might be able to do something for me (big big mistake).

5. Another 2 of the promised 24 hours passed but I got no response either from their backend team or from the lovely people at tata indicom customer service (I hope u get my sarcasm here), I had to give them a call to show my love to them which had grown deeper and deeper in due time. I was dying for them to send a backend support person at my doorstep so that I could strangulate that guy and hang him from my ceiling fan to cool down my frustration. Again I ended up being transferred to a supervisor. This time I was not able to hide my love for the people of tata indicom and gave him some abuses. Again I got a promise for 24 hours from that particular supervisor. Poor guys got blasted by me for giving that promise. I felt like putting my hand through the phone and strangulating him there and then, but I guess the technology has not developed so much to teleport me to him like in the movie “Matrix” (how would I have loved this; I cant even explain to you people).

6. Another 4 of those 24 hours passed. I have fed up now I cant bear even the voice of those bunch of jokers telling me about what they are doing for the connection. Still I had to give them a call as that was the only thing I could I have done. This time god blessed those people with some information and I was informed that the local service had some technical issues. Here I was unable to understand, what was taking a company like tata indicom to fix a local server even after the problem being reported 12 days back. SHEER INCOMPETENCE!!!

7. Days Passed by and I was loosing my nerves. I called twice more and got the same pathetic reply that the work is in progress and they will forward it on an “urgent” basis (at this point of time I had by hearted their entire call scripts).

8. On 28^th Of November I sent an email to their Appelate Authority in Mumbai as well as the Nodal Officer of Bangalore. The email is given below:

This is to inform you that my internet connection is not working since approximately 20 days since 7^th-8^th of November. The complaint number XXXXXXXXX was logged with you people on 10^th of November and even after numerous calls to your customer care number, the connection is still not working. I have not even received one call back from your customer department to update me on the status or the connection has not been working for long.

Any valid explanation for this would be very helpful as well as expediting the repairs on my connection.

I have been told by your customer care representatives and a supervisor that the issue is with the local server. If that’s the case then may I know what can take a company like Tata Indicom to take so long to repair or replace a server??? I expect that you have ample infrastructure to replace the same or have you lost money in the current economic recession that you cannot afford to repair or replace a small server.

Any response to this will be greatly appreciated. I would also request Ms. Priya (Nodal Officer for Bangalore) to give me a callback as her number is never reachable when I try to contact.

A frustrated Customer of a worst  service from Tata Indicom Broadband.

Rahul R Verma

Account email: xxxxxxxx@vsnl.net

Complain number: XXXXXXX

Billing Complain Number: XXXXXXX

9. After 4 good days, I got this reply from the nodal officer. I have added my feeling to the email in brackets and in red bolds.

Dear Mr.Rahul,

Greetings from Tata Communications. (Screw you and your greetings)

This is to inform you that as confirmed from our technical team the broadband connection is not restorable  due to technical issues. (And it took you one month to figure that out? Btw.. how was it working for nearly 2 years before this??? Height of incompetency)

Hence kindly confirm for further action in this regard. (Other Action : Shove the Internet connection with the ADSL modem up your ASS)

We sincerely regret for the delay and inconvenience caused. (Only the ADSL modem in your ass will make me truly accept your apologies)

Regards

Nodal officer South3

10. Now I ended up calling their customer service number again to know how to get rid of their worthless internet services. I was informed that I will have to send an email to their customer service email to get it disconnection. I showed my last love (I think u got what I meant here) to them on the phone call and disconnected.

11. I have sent the email religiously and now I am waiting for the connection to be removed. Though I would love to see a person from tata indicom broadband at my doorstep to strangulate him.

Inner peace has dawned upon me and I am now a much happier person.

So people who are willing to take an broadband connection from tata indicom, think a hundred times. You will be better without one rather that getting one from tata indicom.

And for people who are using tata indicom without any problems, I have sympathies for you as problem is on your way soon. Maybe you are lucky as those idiots have not taken a look at your connection. Keep your connection hidden, as if they notice you.. you will get jinxed too.

Three Cheers for the worst ISP on the planet… they take bad service to a whole new level!!!

PS: Try a search in google with the keywords tata indicom broadband. You will come up with lot of interesting experience like mine.

I would suggest you to view this video posted on You Tube which shows an TV report on Tata Indicom Broadband carried on by CNN-IBN.

Now I will keep you all updated if I have any thing else to share regarding Tata Indicom Broadband.

All hail tata indicom broadband.. which sucks to the core.

When I reached home, I put it in my PC and went into My Computer. When I double clicked the memory key/thumb drive icon, nothing happened and it did not open. Just at that moment, I had a hunch that I had activated a virus or worm from the memory key. Obviously at that particular moment, I was un-ware of the the problem. I scanned the thumb drive from Mcafee Antivirus but it was unable to detect any threat on the thumb drive.

At that moment, I just went ahead and watched the movie. By the way, it was really a good movie, loved it.

After few minutes, I thought of going online to check email and my orkut account. I usually use Mozilla browser as the primary browser on my PC.

The moment I double clicked Mozilla… a message popped open…

I DONT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE… with the title of the dialogue box as USE INTERNET EXPLORER U DOPE.

It was confirmed, I had a virus/worm on my PC. I opened task manager to look for any suspicious program entry but I was not able to find anything. At that moment, I though that I will look after the virus later.

Then I opened Internet Explorer (I rarely use IE), typed in www.orkut.com hit Enter… and here I was with another message and a funny sound too (Nice sound to scare Kids).

The Message was:

Orkut is banned you fool, The administrators didn’t write this program guess who did?? MUHAHAHA!! with the title of the dialogue box as ORKUT IS BANNED.

I was pretty pissed at that moment and gave verbal abuses and curses to the person who had written the virus/worm.

The next thing which I did next day while in Office , was to open www.google.com and search for the message. I got a result which pointed to google groups forums related to Mozilla. A discussion was already on there.

Here is the solution and explanation for it.

Virus Profile: W32/AHKHeap

Origin: N/A

Length: MicrosoftPowerPoint.exe (462,050 bytes), svchost.exe (239,104 bytes)

Type: Virus

SubType: Worm

Virus Characteristics

This is a detection for worm written using AutoHotKey scripts and spreads via removable drives.

Upon execution the worm drops the following files:

• %Temp%\MicrosoftPowerPoint\MicrosoftPowerPoint\2.mp3 (56,467 bytes) –> Media file
• %Temp%\MicrosoftPowerPoint\MicrosoftPowerPoint\drivelist.txt (72 bytes) –> List of drives it tries to replicate
• %Temp%\MicrosoftPowerPoint\MicrosoftPowerPoint\Icon.ico (318 bytes) –> Icon file
• %Temp%\MicrosoftPowerPoint\MicrosoftPowerPoint\Install.txt (8,743 bytes) –> AutoHotKey Script
• %Temp%\MicrosoftPowerPoint\MicrosoftPowerPoint\pathlist.txt (varies) –> List of drives worm is copied to
• %Temp%\MicrosoftPowerPoint\MicrosoftPowerPoint\svchost.exe (239,104 bytes) –> Copy of worm
• c:\heap41a\2.mp3 (56,467 bytes) –> Media file played when alert box is displayed
• c:\heap41a\drivelist.txt (72 bytes) –> List of drives to scan for
• c:\heap41a\Icon.ico (318 bytes) –> Icon file
• c:\heap41a\reproduce.txt (834 bytes) –>AutoHotKey Script for registry manipulation
• c:\heap41a\script1.txt (3,588 bytes) –> AutoHotKey Script for Messagebox creation
• c:\heap41a\std.txt (439 bytes) –> AutoHotKey Script for registry manipulation / run other scripts
• c:\heap41a\svchost.exe (239,104 bytes) –> Copy of worm
• c:\heap41a\offspring\autorun.inf (21 bytes) –> used to autorun the worm when the drive is accessed

Creates the following registry keys to hook at system startup:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\Run
  “winlogon”= “C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap41a\std.txt”

Disables the show hidden file options in folder options using the following registry:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\
• Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL”CheckedValue” = “00000000″

The worm also prevents the user from accessing certain websites like orkut.com and youtube.com and gives an error message as explained by me earlier.

Method of Infection

The worm spreads via removable drives. Infection starts either with manual execution of the binary or by navigating to folders containing infected files whereby the autorun.inf files can cause auto-execution.

Removal Instructions

1. Go to your task manager by pressing ctrl + alt + del .In that go to processes tab .

2. In that look for svchost.exe . You might find more than one of them . In that look for those who have user name as your login name of computer and end those processes .

3. Now open My Computer In the address bar, type C:\heap41a and hit enter. It is a hidden folder, and is not visible by default. Delete all the files in this folder .

4. Now go to Start –> Run and type Regedit , Go to the menu Edit –> FindType “heap41a” here and press enter. You will get something like this “[winlogon] C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap(some number)\std.txt”Select that and Press DEL. It will ask “Are you sure you want to delete this value”, click Yes. Now close the registry editor and you are done .

The virus is removed from the PC now, but ensure to delete the autorun.inf file from the thumb drive.

Now McAfee, Symantec and Avast have updated the virus definition files for this worm. It should be detected and removed from the PC, if you have an anti virus software installed.

You will think now that the problem is solved……..but not yet. You will not be able to see the hidden files. Even if you change the setting in the folder options, it will not show the hidden files. So here are the steps to remove that problem and make the hidden files appear and the folder option settings to work as before.

To remove the worm completely from your computer, you need to remove Registry keys written by the worm

• Press “Window key” + “r” or go to Start–>Run, then type “regedit” (without quotes).
• You need to navigate to
• “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\ Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL, checkedvalue”
• And reset the “CheckedValue” key back to 1. This is to show all the hidden files.

If the virus/worm is still on the PC, then the problem will keep on re-occurring. So don’t forget to install a good anti-virus program with updated virus definitions.

Happy Surfing and Virus Squashing.

Rahul.