Officials of Calcutta Telephones have been warned against sitting on applications for surrender of landline phones for reasons ranging from dead connections to faulty billing.

The directive comes after Metro highlighted how claiming a refund of the security deposit after surrendering a landline takes months in some cases. Some BSNL officials had attributed the delay to a system upgrade, but chief general manager S. P. Tripathi said this could not be an excuse for any delay in settling pending claims.

"Even if there was a system change, it was an internal process. Customers should not have suffered because of that," he told Metro.

In a meeting last week, he told officials across departments that all pending refunds should be cleared at the earliest.

"I also made it clear that settlement of dues henceforth should not take more than 60 days, as mentioned on the BSNL website," Prasad said.

Shamendra Kujur, general manager of finance, said settlement of dues had picked up speed since the system upgrade was completed. "In the past couple of weeks, 435 refund cheques have been issued."

The telecom company has also come up with a scheme called Reconnection Mela to win back old customers. The objective is to bring back customers who had exited over service-related issues.

Camps have been set up at 25 locations across Calcutta and old customers who had surrendered their phones are being contacted and offered special schemes. "We are offering discounts to such customers," Kujur said.

Where payments are outstanding, rentals are being selectively waived. "We also have offers like unlimited free calls on Sundays," said A.K. Ghorai, deputy general manager, marketing and sales.

The Reconnection Mela started on October 24 and is scheduled to continue till November 23. Until last Friday, more than 150 surrendered connections had been restored.

State-owned BSNL has the largest telecom network in the country but is perceived as an unprofessional organisation in terms of resolving service issues. "The company wants to change this perception," Ghorai said.

Bikash Saha, a resident of Barasat, had a BSNL landline connection in his name that would often malfunction. Complaints didn't help and he surrendered the phone in April.

A week ago, Saha received a call from BSNL requesting him to opt for "reconnection" and promising better service. "I was hesitant initially. But then I thought, let's give it a try," he said.

Saha got his landline five days ago.

Bikash Mukherjee, whose plight Metro had highlighted last week, welcomed BSNL's initiative to engage customers but pointed out that quality of service was the key to retaining loyalty. "Ground-level implementation needs to be constantly monitored," he said.