I
have been customer of Airtel cellular service for more
than one year. I haven’t had a major
problem with quality of network during this period except regular call blocking
for hours(They block your number so you can not make of receive calls, and
this is acknowledged by there customer service Rep on 121). Not that I had high regard for Airtel
Customer Service Reps before this experience as they are nothing but another
set of recording trained to repeatedly utter something on the tune of ‘mein
aapko adhik se adhik jaankaari uplabdh karaane kaa prayaas karungaa’ rather
than providing any useful ‘jaankaari’.
Though, irritating these things were, I was never bothered much until my
recent experience.
My problem started
when all the cellular service providers slashed their STD calling rates. Earlier, the STD rates were more than Rs.
2/min so I had subscribed to Airtel’s weekly rental plan that charges Rs
25/week but you pay only Rs. 1.20/min for STD calls. Now, since STD calls are only Rs. 1.50/min, I wanted to cancel my
weekly rental scheme, as it does not make my STD calling significantly
cheaper. With this novel intent to save
my Rs. 100 month I called Airtel Customer Service number 121. Here is the history of my interaction with
various Airtel Customer Service Reps and Seniors on Airtel’s Complaint Hotline
on 198 over a period of a month:
First week of September, 2008:
I dial 121: Rep says
he cannot help me because his system is down and advises me to call again after
some time.
September 10, 2008:
Get a Rep with working system, he accepted my
complaint and promised that my weekly rental scheme will be deactivated within
24 hrs(or it could be 48 hrs, I do not remember clearly). But, he refused to
provide me with a reference number for the complaint.
September 16, 2008:
The Rep acknowledges that a complaint was received on 10th
September but the weekly rental scheme could not be deactivated because of some
technical problem. But it will be deactivated within 24 hrs. Rep again refuses to provide a reference
number for the complaint.
September 20, 2008:
I get a person with nonworking system; he refused to
transfer my call to another Rep.
I dialed 121 again. The Rep apologizes that my weekly rental
scheme has not been cancelled. He asks
me about balance and validity that I have.
I had a good balance with validity up to January 2009. He advised me to go for a life time validity
recharge for Rs. 196 that will give Rs. 100 talk time, and assures me that this
will cancel all the previous schemes. I
refused to do that because it would cost me Rs. 96. Also, as I have good 4
months validity and many better recharge/validity schemes may be available in
future. Agreeing to my argument, he
promised that the rental scheme would be deactivated within 24 hrs.
The scheme was not cancelled and Airtel was deducting Rs. 25
every week for the service that I did not really wanted to use. Being
frustrated with Airtel’s Customer
Service Representatives, I searched online for any other way out of
this. To my temporary relief I found that Airtel
has a Complaint Redressel Mechanism. They have Nodal Officers contact
number
at: https://airtel.in/applications/xm/ReachMobile_CS_NodalOfficer.jsp
and Appellate Authority contact number at:
https://airtel.in/applications/xm/ReachMobile_CS_AppellateAuth.jsp
So I thought, finally, there is somebody who can possible
solve my problem. But, alas, after repeatedly trying the numbers provided on
the Airtel’s website(and mind you, in the case of Mumbai that number given on
Nodal Officer link is for Appellate Authority and vice versa) I could not hear
the voice of Nodal Officer or Appellate Authority. All I got to hear is their schedule and some scary music followed
by beep beep beep beep…
October 4, 2008:
Now having exhausted all the feasible options(I do not know
whether going to consumer court will the worth the efforts) I decided to follow the advice of the
‘Friendly’ Airtel Customer Care Rep on September 20. I went to nearby Airtel center to get the lifetime validity for
Rs. 196 and lose Rs. 96 once rather then losing more than Rs. 100 every month
(as there are more that 4 weeks in a month).
I lost all my wits when I was told that I cannot get this recharge as I
am subscribed to one of the Airtel’s weekly rental schemes and need to get
deactivated that before getting this Recharge.
October 4, 2008:
The Rep accepts my complaint about canceling the weekly
rental scheme and requests if he could put me on hold for 30 secs. Never
answers back.
I dialed 121 again: The Rep takes my complaint to cancel to
weekly rental scheme and promises that it will be cancelled within 24 hrs. But
reference number for the complaint was not given.
During my various calls to Airtel, one of messages that
stuck in my mind was call 198 for you complaints. So I decided to give it a try.
The Rep that I got to spoke seemed reasonable and very
concerned but she told me that the only complaint that she could see was lodged
on October 4, 2008 and it would take 24 hrs for it to be processed. I asked if there is a reference number
associated with the complaint, she promptly said yes and provided me with a
number 1004222665.
October 8, 2008:
I called 198 to see the status of my complaint, the Rep says
the scheme was not deactivated because of some technical problem and will be
deactivated within 24 hrs. He also gives me a number 100810257700.
October 9, 2008:
I get an SMS from 121 saying ‘Thank you for contacting
Airtel. Your request reference number is 1009020347. For your concerns, kindly
dial 198(toll free).”
But the scheme is yet to be cancelled. Now I am thinking that I will switch to some
other service provider once my balance becomes zero. I will switch to some other cellular service provider not because
I believe that they are better than Airtel in their service, but at least I will
not be losing Rs. 25 a week for rest of my life(or the plan’s life) as will be
the case if I continue with Airtel.
Thanks
Pankaj
