Hyderabad, August' 2004:Reliance infocomm had deployed a massive machinery to tighten its grip over willful and chronic defaulters who have been avoiding paying bills for use of its mobile services.

Reliance infocomm is leaving no stone unturned to trace down the chronic defaulters. In recent initiatives, the company has hired special agency that are taking help of postman, local police and local community leaders to trace down the chronic defaulters. These are the people who know every nook and corner of a community and renders valuable leads for catching a chronic defaulter. In cases where the addresses given for the subscribed number is wrong, help from these people are coming very handy.

This was made possible through the use of latest Geographical Information System (GIS) Technology and the modern network monitoring centers, where it is possible to trace down the user anywhere in India. The evidence gathered, include information contained in the call records and the GIS information about the physical movement of the customers and calls made by the customer. An elite team of lawyers and police officials helped the company in the evidence gathering operations, which was underway for more than four months.

Normally, defaulters receive a variety of communication and reminders from the company including duplicate bills, SMS reminders, Calls; personal visits from collection agents and employees. But the company does not appear to be in mood to be soft with willful defaulters.

A channel source when contacted commented "The company appears to be treating such cases now with utmost seriousness and is making sure that the defaulters don't go scot-free. The company has apparently mapped the defaulters and have zeroed down on willful defaulters and they have no other option but to pay".

The sources explained that the company has given a long rope to these defaulters by allowing them enough grace period to clear dues. The company has even announced an amnesty scheme allowing in many cases to pay just Rs.2200 and migrate to prepaid schemes, against the existing post paid regime. This amount is likely to rise further according to some reliable sources.

While we are extremely happy and satisfied that thousands of our esteemed customers have availed the benefit of the migration scheme, there are a few who appear to be hell bent on evading the payment of bills, the sources said.

We do not want to scare away any of our subscribers whom we respect a lot, but at the same time we have to be stern with those who think they can get away by not paying and even trying to abscond after giving false addresses, a legal panelist of Reliance Infocomm said.

Reliance Infocomm's drive to allow migration to prepaid has resulted in thousands of subscribers opting for it. Its drive using the collection agent network has also begun to show results. "But there are few cases of chronic defaulters whom we want to tackle in accordance with the law," a source said.

One such case, which was recently nabbed by the cops, is the case of Mr. Ghousuddin, a customer who made a willful default in payment of bill by raising a bill of Rs.185000. To avoid the payment he lodged a complaint with the police station stating that one of his friend by name Mr. Aslam took his mobile to Bangalore for usage and never returned the handset instead offered him Rs.3350 towards the cost of handset which he refused and he tried to take shelter under the guise of police complaint to avoid the payment. On continuous persuasion by legal dept of Reliance, the police conducted thorough investigation and concluded that it was a cooked up story by the customer who is responsible to make the entire payment and thus has been arrested for misappropriation, cheating and criminal breach of trust.