Aug 15, 2016 05:23 PM
7772 Views
First things first. Have been an airtel broadband customer for 10+ years now and have never once been late in paying my bills these past many years.
Started off back in 2006 when 512Kbps was considered bountiful! I upgraded the tariff plan over the years but never really had to check if I was really getting the speeds advertised since all I did was check emails from home and some minimal surfing.
In Jun'16, the airtel customer care centre gave me a string of calls and sweet-talked me into upgrading the connection from my existing 4Mbps connection to 16Mbps and stated that I would have a 80GB limit and all for Rs. 1357/-+ tax(there were many other competitive offers for far less but the dinosaur in me refused to budge). Took the bait thinking it would future proof my needs.
For the past 2 days, I was getting extremely slow downloads even on emails and just on a hunch thought of checking the speed. Imagine my shock when the Ookla speed test showed the speed at 200Kbps(no that is not a typo!) for a server based out of Chennai.
I called the Airtel customer care on 14-Aug-2016(Sunday) and to their technical team's credit, the guy showed up today(15-Aug-2016) at 11am sharp. After checking with the back-end team, this is what the technical team had to say - "We are sorry sir but the 16Mbps plan never should have been sold to you. For your area the max. speed that can be guaranteed is 4Mbps. Kindly call customer care for a waiver request for bills already paid and ask them to downgrade your connection". The technician did the best he could and now when I measured the speed, it showed a measly 0.73Mbps(screenshot attached as evidence)
I promptly called up 121(Airtel customer care) and talked to the floor-in-charge - Mr. Shyam and explained the situation to him. Having heard what happened, Mr. Shyam and said that there is no question of any waiver since I have already "enjoyed the services". When asked what are the charges for the 4Mbps service, his answer was that the charges do not change since they have 4Mbps packs for 80GB now priced in the same range and that I should shift immediately to the 4Mbps plan without any change in tariff! If this is not daylight robbery, I don't know what is.
The only piece of useful information that I got was how to get my connection terminated which I would be exercising shortly.
Hope this information is of help to one and all who are considering buying a plan from Airtel and also to those who are already with Airtel!
