First one to crack the code wins
May 13th, 2009
Post the answer in the comments below. First account holder to get it right wins.
I’ll check and approve comments after the Lost finale. Good luck.
Here is the coded message: nozxybtsknajmzsiwjikwjjrnszyjxkwtrnsinfqi
UPDATE: Whoops I should have mentioned that the prize is 500 free minutes.
by Chris@IndiaLD
IJUSTVONFIUEHUNDREDFREEMINUTESFROMINDIALD
to be technically correct…its
ijustwonfivehundredfreeminutesfromindiald
Congrats Prateek, you got it. I’ll email you about those minutes tomorrow.
Mast Hai Bhai….. Congrats!!!!@Prateek Jaiswal
I have a bad experience with IndiaLD. I am just waiting to end this one month cycle (may 15, 2009) so that I can stop this service.
I had no problem until 3 months and then they suddenly billed me 3 times instead of one time in 4th month-cycle and have not responded to almost 8-10 emails. They do not have customer phone service (they claim that they do so so as to cut the running costs, which I agree, but why do not they respond to email queries). So you are kind of stuck up.
Similarly I had one technical snag also with the their service, but they never responded to my emails. Now every time I have to enter my account number each time I make call from my cell, which is highly annoying.
Chris – the owner-is more busy attracting more and more customers via Twitter, etc but does not take care of old customers. Today I had to cancel and change my credit card so as to pre-empt IndiaLD from billing me next time (may 16) as they would do that since they do not respond to emails and have not entertained my email request for canceling the subscription in last 48 hours.
Chris, you are doing a bad business, believe me! Ii is amusing that you are more active at Twitter ‘trapping’ new customers rather than retaining your old customers. I am taking extra efforts to reach more and more people to expose your lousy services.
Munish
Munish,
I am sorry that you have had a bad experience with IndiaLD.
First let me say that we did have problems with our customer service process. We grew extremely fast and were not properly staffed to keep up with the amount of customers. When we realized this in March, we doubled the size of our customer care team. It took us some time to train this additional staff and get them up to speed, however more people did not solve the problem.
When we looked deeper into the issue, we discovered that our original contact form and email system had problems. Emails were not being delivered to us, and our contact form was not capturing the information we needed to quickly resolve support problems. Both of those issues were addressed at the start of May when we redesigned our contact page and purchased a more advanced email management system. These two changes have had a huge impact on our turnaround time, and ensure that support requests are received and responded to. We ask for 48 hours to process requests because our customer care team does not work on the weekends, so if you make a support request then it will take until Monday to be seen.
In regards to billing, I would need to look at your account to see what happened. If you went over your monthly minutes, we would have billed you more than once in a month. The first charge would have been for your monthly service fee and the second for the additional minutes over your monthly minutes. There are other reasons why we may have charged you, including in error. If you want me to look at your account, please email me (chris@indiald.com) with your account number.
Our method of charging for additional minutes is not efficient nor is it a great customer experience. We are aware of that, and are working on developing an alternate method where customers can purchase additional minutes through the website for the normal cost of their minutes. Unfortunately, this will take some time as it requires that we customize our billing software.
Having to enter your account number is an issue that we believe mainly happens with VOIP phones. It is a problem that we are pressing our access number provider to fix. In the meantime, we have set up an alternate access number: (206) 260-1121 with a different carrier that VOIP callers can use. This number has been added to our FAQ, Contact, and Access number pages
I started using Twitter and blogging so that I could communicate better with our customers. Attracting customers is important, but keeping them is just as important. We are in a subscription business where quality and service matters just as much as price. A low price might get someone in the door, but it will not keep them. When there is a problem or a customer is unhappy, I want them to be able to tell me. This is why I use Twitter, added a blog, and put my email address out there. Twitter is mainly to keep our current customers happy. 95% of the people following us are customers.
You’ve obviously had a bad experience using our service. What I say today may or may not change how you feel about us, but its important to let you know that the people behind this business care about the customer experience and are working hard everyday to make it better. Our long term success is going to be determined by how well we do delivering a quality product, and we are in it for the long term.
India LD is only 5 months old. We spent the first 3 getting going, we spent the fourth evaluating what we had done right and wrong, and now we are focused on improving our product and providing a great service.
My email is chris@indiald.com. If you are open to giving our service another chance, email me.
Dear Chris:
I have just written to you at the email you provided.
Thanks.
Dear Chris,
Seeing Munish’s comment was really unfortunate and is biased. I have recently updated my Indiald Plan from 1000 to 1500 and now almost all my indian freinds use Indiald to call India. This is because, of all the calling cards I used, yours was the cheapest and the best. All I would like to say is that you guys for working hard to provide the best service. It is almost comparable to Airtel’s service (except that you guys do not give telephonic services which is OK with me because your customer service department was prompt in replying any e-mails). I really hope that you guys can keep up the good work you are doing. Thank You
I just wrote this program
main()
{
char *s = “nozxybtsknajmzsiwjikwjjrnszyjxkwtrnsinfqi”;
while (*s)
{
putchar(*s – ‘n’ + ‘i’);
s++;
}
}
Happy to realize that it is working
o/p is ijust]onfi\ehundredfreeminutesfromindiald. Think Chris modified two letters in between. Keep it up chris. Fun to see your blog
Don’t worry about minutes, i just liked posting this
@Ananta Same here…I was surprised to know IndiaLD is just 5 months old…well it always take some time to setup processes and get the wheel moving…Munish’s anger might be justified…initially without even a contact no. on the site (and knowing its just borrowing the whole technology from freecallplanet) it was difficult to judge if we are dealing with _real & serious_ people or a bunch of scamsters trying to fish your credit card numbers…definitely blog and twitter helps to bridge that gap…seems like a good job…have been recommending IndiaLd the day they added 10 bangalore direct dial numbers
…all the very best Chris.
p.s. seems like you don’t add it by default to all accounts, any specific reason. Few of my friends joined IndiaLD specifically for this feature…
Chris,
I was wondering why you guys do not provide Rolling over minutes. The only reason why most of my friends buy 1500 plan and not 2000 plan is because we do not use the entire 2000 minutes and anything left over is a waste. So, please take a look into this matter and try to do something about this.
@Samba – thanks for the code cracking code. Maybe we’ll try a harder one in the future.
@Prateek – The Bangalore auto dial numbers are not added by default because they are a performance hit on our database versus a relatively low rate of usage. Basically we would double the size of that table and <5% of people would use them. If you have friends that need them setup, then have them email me and I can add them in.
@Ananta – We can’t do rollover minutes because of the way our software works. Lame answer, but that’s one of the drawbacks of 3rd party solutions.
What we are working on instead is a way for you to buy blocks of additional minutes. If for instance you had the 1500 minute plan and needed 200 more minutes for the month, you could just buy another 200 minutes via the website. Blocks would be priced at about the same per minute rate at the plan you are in now instead of the 3.9 cent overage pricing that we have.
I just spec’ed this out and sent it off to our developer, so we’ll see how long it takes to get out there.
It is unfortunate that you term my comments and complaint ‘biased’.
Any one can be trapped in such a situation, where no one replies to your issues related to technical snag and triplicate billing. A few complaint numbers (support request ID) are: 42637, 42440, 42138. None of my 8- 10 emails were answered and funnily enough, my request to cancel the subscription too has not been answered as yet. But I am not worried now since on May 16, my Chris will not be able to bill me as my credit card number has changed. Moreover, Chris has not responded to my email so far.
And the agonizing details of taking steps to recover my money and changing the credit card number are equally true. Send me your email ID at pedia333@yahoo.com and I will send you all the proof. Yes, all the details. I will even send you the scanned copy of my credit card bill. Some sage person can say why do I need to show you the details, basically! Yes, but next time you will think twice before discrediting someone’s complaint or grievance without knowing the facts.
No doubt, India LD calls are the cheapest, but one just needs to be trapped once in such a situation and all his/her money saved will taste real value of that.
Munish,
I have emailed you twice in the last 24 hours regarding your account issues. Please check your pedia333@yahoo.com address and its spam folder. I am also going to forward my emails to your other address. One of those emails contains a detailed breakdown of what happened with your account. For the record, we issued you a refund of $19.95 on 5/13 and canceled your account on 5/15. Our customer service team responded to your support requests in both cases. I don’t know why you are not getting emails from me or IndiaLD, but I got your email the yesterday and put a lot of effort into responding to you. Its rather frustrating that we are not communicating correctly.
I prefer not to discuss account issues in blog comments since accounts are private matters and this is a public space. If I do not see a response from you via email after I forward my emails to your other address, I will call you to resolve this. This is a communication issue, not a lack of response from us.
Chris
Thanks, Chris! Surprisingly I did not receive any email at pedia333@yahoo.com (even spam folder). I am sending you an email so as to continue the matter.
Chris personally called me and we were able to thrash our the issue. I am happy to continue the services of IndiaLD.
All is well that ends well.
Hi Chris,
I am using your 3000 min plan, and its really working great for me.. But 3000 mins is not sufficient for me..
Its great that you are planning to add a feature to buy more mins at the same rate as per our plan. I am eagerly waiting for your developer to add this feature asap.
One suggestion – Instead of buying more minutes, will it not be good, if we just go on using the additional mins as we do now, and instead of charging 3.9 at the EOM, you can charge us as per our plan. i.e 1.3 cents per minute. This way, we are not restricted in any ways, while calling home.. and it means more business for you
-Thanks
Chris,
I have been trying to call India for the last hour or so. It says ‘lines are busy’. can you help? I am using the 949 number.
PK
Hi
Why are the access numbers in US not working? The access numbers were changed a couple fo times.
Today I ound that from NJ the access codes do not work. There are only 2 numbers listed for So. Cal and No.Cal I think. What do we do? Cancel?
@ashok Reddy
Calling services are back and working like usual. Please do not cancel your account. It was a system wide problem with our access number, not something specific to your account.
@Gautam
About how many minutes a month do you use? I didn’t think we had a lot of people going well over 3000 which is why we don’t have larger plans. Maybe we’ll add on, if it looks like there is demand.
HI Chris,
Thanks for the response!! Well, I should be comfortable with around 4000 – 5000 minutes per month. But again, it depends.. some times I may not even cross 3000 mins.. It would be great if we have a flexible plan.
But as of now, I will be IN for a 4000 or 5000 min plan.
Hey How about a 5000 min plan for 50$?..
1 cent/min 
@Gautam
I would love to, but then we wouldn’t make any money…Sounds like having the ability to buy more minutes is really the answer here. At times like this, I wish I could code and get the job done myself. Sit tight for now and we’ll try to get something out there in the near future.
@Samba
@Samba: How did you figure out the code crack?
putchar(*s – ‘n’ + ‘i’); //really amazing. Was it a guess, or a process?
I’d like to know if you have an idea.
- Nick