On June 25th 2012, Tata Docomo's VAS department sent across the second list of "BDRC numbers" to VAS companies, a list, we're told that is pretty large. BDRC refers to a database the telco has created, of customers who are BalanceDepletionRepeatComplainants. This process was begun on the 21st of May 2012, where a set of customers who complained often about VAS billing would be blacklisted (interesting choice of words) from being subscribed to VAS services on any platform for a period of 90 days, and only be allowed event/pull/browsing based products such as wallpapers, ringtones, voice browsing services, SMS pull etc, but most importantly, no subscription services. As a part of inclusion in this "blacklisting period", Tata DOCOMO communicates to the customer that they will not be able to subscribe to a service for a 90 day period. They're automatically delisted from the database after 90 days. This is a welcome move by Tata DOCOMO, and is the latest step in a series of moves by the telecom operator. Earlier emails (also with MediaNama) point towards other steps that are a part of this Project Clean VAS. An email dated May 17th 2012 states that New customers shall NOT be promoted any VAS for a period of 10 days from the date of activation on the network, and the launch of START/STOP services to allow customers to activate and deactivate VAS services, launch of VAS statement on Demand, to allow customers to check which services they are being charged for, stringent…
