Jan 15, 2008 10:26 PM
4636 Views
(Updated Jan 15, 2008 10:43 PM)
Their service was good when the broadband offer was on 256 KBPS. But when they started dreaming big and started offering 2 MBPS, the service levels hit the rock bottom. Basically, any new launch(2MBPS here) for a such big customer base is a challenge and Airtel failed to meet up the challenge and they have clearly over estimated their ability and under estimated the customer.
The customer service is fast but helpless as they don’t control the back end teams which attend the problem and are highly inefficient. It is pathetic. They believe in the Mantra of "Attending customer immediately rather than solving the problems."
Customer has to make repeated calls to know the status. They promise to call back but never abide.
I raised a upgrade request from 256 KBPS to 2MBPS on Nov 22nd 2007. They started the billing immediately but failed to give me 2 MBPS. They promised at least 250 KBPS download speed but I got 19 KBPS. When I called customer service immediately, they told me that my PC had virus attack. First time I thought so and checked everything. Had all the legal anti-virus s/w etc and found that is not the case.
I raised a complaint on Dec 8th. They sit on it and doesn’t show any respect to the promises they make and were clueless about the root cause of the problem. But they accepted that it was problem on their side.
After 40 days they finally closed the complaint on Dec 31, 2007. They gave a credit of RS 400 and I realized that spent more money calling the customer care. To add to the wounds, I realized that they didn’t fix the problem and had to open the complaint again on Jan 8 2008. They accepted it and sit on it till date with no progress. They seem to be clueless!
I had so many comical situations when I deal with their customer care. offf. I wonder how such a public limited big corporation’s customer facing unit has so much inefficiency crept into!
On one situation, the customer care person couldn’t locate my complaint int he system. I spent lot of time explaining and giving references of my previous discussions and ticket. Then I realized that they may have 2-3 systems in which the issues are logged. When I suggested this, he realized that a new sys was introduced that day and my complaint was logged in old one and hence unattended. This is just one of the many more encounters that showed Airtel's inefficiency.
The situation has become so worse that, I know most of the names of the cust care guys. The team leads take the escalations and they stopped answering my calls. Believe me I am not at all rude towards them. it is just that their back end department is not delivering the promises made and these guys have to bear the brunt and hence stopped taking calls.
Their escalation mechanism is terrible. If the problem doesn’t get solved, it sits at the team lead and that is it. They dont allow access to higher management and the customer doesn’t know if there is a manager who is keeping a tab on complaints that are older that "X" amount of days. Whenever I asked access to persons beyond the team lead, the answer was "no not possible".
I started thinking that is this just one off incident and I had to be the unlucky bloke to face this entire music. I started asking few friends who initially used say “Airtel Rocks” 1 / 1.5 back. But everybody is having some or the other issue. So becoming more curious, I started searching in Internet about the problems. I found so many people complaining about Airtel broadband. I am not the only one. I used to regard Airtel as a big corp. Now knowing this entire episode, the reality is out! On a different note I am planning to sell my Bharati shares as it is a time bomb waiting explode J
I feel this is an inefficient company waiting for its turn to die a dog’s death unless a miracle happens to turn the tables.
This entire episode has become a mystery to me and I started feeling very curious about the way Airtel operates and how it is able to survive such a huge business with this mess around. May be today customer has few options to go to. Is that what Airtel is thinking… Need to find out and time will tell… I as one single customer may not do anything as of now but it has left indelible marks of Agony and torture on me. I wish this reaches Mittal if possible and he knows how his pet brand is operating in Hyderabad J
Dealing with Airtel is a mental harassment and is still ongoing. I am going through it and am sure lot of people would have had and having their share. I would love if my story reaches many more people and am just curious to see the response of few of them
