May 02, 2013 07:16 AM
2092 Views
Want to pay more for less value? Want to experience non existent customer service? Want to get cheated.
Airtel provides all of these in one single and simple pack called "Airtel 4G LTE". No waiting for poor service, it starts the minute you pay them the money. Welcome to Airtel greed. Now the proof of the pudding for me
The sales/demo executive came on time, confirm their arrival multiple times. They demoed it against primarily the "speedtest.net". Wow see I get close to 30 Mbps. But the trick is that if I try the speed test against other servers or even airtel's own speed test server then magic happens as the speed is consistently less than 15 Mbps and on average comes up to only 5 Mbps.
Out of desperation since I do not have any other broadband I buy the 4G LTE dongle and the “service” starts as soon as I’m done the payment. The sales executive tells me “Your dongle will be activated within 24 hrs”, what they are really telling me is that “Your dongle will be activated 24 hrs after verification team person has visited you and entered the details in the system”. Sadly dumb me was not able to read in between their lines (or is it lies?)
I had another special service added to my buy cycle. Even after 24 hrs after the verification person came and verified, my wireless dongle was not activated. When I enquired the “Verification Department” I was told “Sir the person who came to verify should have given you the number associated with your dongle”. But I was not given.
I had the pleasure of calling multiple times the sales executive who sold me the dongle and the local office which airtel has outsourced for verification to get my number. That added another 24hrs.
Once I get the number, I call the Verification Department of Airtel to get the 4G LTE verified. “Yay me” you might think that now I have web connectivity.. That is where you are wrong.
Just out of curiosity I open up the “Resource Manager” of Windows 7 Task Manager, I suddenly see that the “ConnectionManager” process of airtel seems to be using up close to 12 KBps with no other process running. I immediately contact the “I don’t Care for Customer” number for help to understand this behavior
After I explain the details, while the “I don’t care for customer” executive considers me as a moron who has say “Window Update” or some “Malware” running behind the scenes for the download of 12 KBps and I patiently explain that I have verified this using the “Resource Manager” of Windows 7. The clueless executive promises “Someone from technical team will contact you in 24 hrs”. Wonders of wonder, no one contacts me.
But to exasperate the problem, unlike Airtel Mobile or Landline, the previous executive did not give me any “Reference number” to track my problem. Not only that this 12KBps of data cheating happening but also my connection seems to drop out for apparently no reason, though my LTE shows all 4 bars green (full signal strength). So I call again, but this time I’m smarter, I ask the name of the executive at the other end and also some tracking information. He gives his name as Rohan and “interaction number” as f1256711198. He says to me “We will surely call you in 24 hrs this time”. 24 hrs gone but no call.
The problem of connection dropping in-spite of full signal strength is so baffling and frustrating I make one more call to “I don’t care for customer” number. Now another executive of the name H. Raghav handles the call. He is polite and seems genuinely interested to help me. He asks me to take the SIM out of the dongle and reinsert it and try again. But after some time the connection drops. He informs “some problem with the SIM’s registration with the network” and “our technical team would contact you as soon as we fix this from our end” That interaction ID was 1247295862.
So after a week no one calls and I still face the issue.
Keeping all these wonderful experiences in my mind, I’m planning to surrender my newly bought 4G LTE and plan to living happily in office till 11:30 pm to attend all my meetings.
