Hundreds of consumers looking to subscribe to Reliance Jio connection were turned away on Monday after company retail outlets witnessed heavy rush since morning. By afternoon, Reliance Digital outlets in many locations across Mumbai, Delhi and other parts of the country were refusing to accept any more applications from consumers. Instead, users were being either given a token number for a future date or were told to call a particular number to know when they could come back for completing the KYC process.
" I was told to come back later as they stopped taking new application forms. I was given token with Sept 29 as the date when I could get the SIM," said a disappointed Sudhanu Mohapatra outside a Reliance Retail outlet in Worli, Mumbai.
Another consumer was told to call a centralised number to get the token number before filling up the application form. Interestingly, the phone number given out was an MTNL number.
An executive at one of retail outlets in Mumbai said that he had received over 300 application forms every day for the last ten days. "These forms have to be uploaded in the system, KYC needs to be verified, and then the SIM needs to be activated. So we have been told to issue tokens so that we can streamline the process in phases," the executive said.
The demand for connection is a good sign for Reliance Jio but it should have anticipated the rush better since it is giving services for free till December 31.