Satyam staff have inflated phone bills too

3 Feb 2009,

HYDERABAD: Satyamites are now dealing with yet another `inflated' reality. Having spent a rather bumpy January over the phone, talking their hearts out with family and friends, employees are now paying the price, literally, for all the talking they did. Many Satyam employees say their mobile phone bills have sky rocketed this month, what with their usage having gone up drastically in the last one month.

The stores that sell prepaid recharge coupons in areas which have a fair population of Satyamites too report to have done good business this month. "I have sold the recharge coupons like hot cakes in the last 20 days. I recognise most of these young faces working in Satyam that are frequent visitors to my store. They kept coming again and again this month to get their phones recharged,'' says the owner of a general store in Sindhi colony in Secunderabad calculating his profit to be more than Rs 5,000 by recharge coupons alone doing an overall business of close to Rs 30,000.

Says a young Satyam associate whose post-paid phone bill never go beyond Rs 1,000 but has touched an "unbelievable'' Rs 2,000 this month. Known to be a little stingy among his friends when it comes to making calls, he says chatting up his friends and consoling his parents was something he could not avoid in these tough times. "As I stay away from my home most of the calls I made were STD. I would call my parents and friends a lot of times in a day updating them of each and every development and discussing future plans,'' he says, reflecting on why his bill doubled in January. "In fact, my phone proved to be my best friend this month. I have spent sleepless nights chatting with my friends and family. I received consoling calls even from my distant relatives and many a times I had to call them back,'' says another Satyamite.

Significantly, many calls were even made to head hunters and contacts in other firms to figure out vacancies. "As there were stringent checks in office as to what we were up to we couldn't make calls from office phones nor check job sites or contact placement consultants. All such calls had to be made by personal phones only. I also called a number of my friends in other cities to look for vacancies in their firms. The phone bill I knew would cost me a fortune,'' says an associate showing his phone bill was a whopping Rs 3,000 last month.