Don't even think about it, it sucks!!. Review on Airtel Mobile Operator

I have at one time or the other had all the major service providers like Reliance, Cellone, Hutch(before the take over) Vodafone(thereafter) and Idea, and let me tell you Airtel is by far the worst.

Customer Service

They hide the option that allows you to speak to their customer service agent in their IVR menu and it takes such a long time to find that out. Then there is that interminable wait time and if you hang up and try calling once again you will never get the line. I don't know if this is a roumor but I was told by my cousin who had a friend working in Airtel customer service that the server is programmed in such a way that if you call customer service once, you cannot connect to that service again for a fixed amount of time, therfore effectively denying you the chance to find another helpful person should the agent you talk to prove unhelpful and 90% of the agents I ever talked to had no proper answer to my query anyway.

Coverage

The only reason to ever put up with the pathetic customer care service offered is that the coverage is good in urban areas. But the coverage and signal quality have also deteriorated over time. Only in a matter of one month I could not get signals in my bedroom where there used to be full coverage before that. And the thing that finally decided the issue was the clearly careless and shabby way they treated my genuine complaint and the silly excuses I was offered regarding as to why money was deducted from my account.

My Hellish Experience with Airtel

I would not care to repeat the nightmarish experience I had with their customer service two years ago(may 28th, I even remember the date! It was that bad). They had a full talk time offer(for prepaid users) going on at that time 666 going at that time. So I had this recharge done at a easy recharge point and got the amount made a call and had a balance of 638 then I had to remove the SIM and when I replace it just 20 mins later, I had zero balance. I was very pissed off, I had urgent calls to make. So went to the place where I got this recharge done and that person immediately called up customer service(the agents have seperate customer service line and if you have a problem with recharging aspects this option is better, so run to ur nearest agent) after 30 minutes of heated argument I was told that the reason my money was deducted was because proir to this recharge my account was mistakenly recharged and so they made a charge back, which was bullshit. I luckily had the transaction IDs for last 3 recharges(if I hadn't saved them I would have been cheated out of that amount). So reeled off the transaction IDs and the guy had no answer he insisted they recieved a complaint from the agent so this was done. I approached the other agent next day and he assured me he made no such complaint and he told me another very important detail. If your account is mistakenly recharged, then the charge back is only effective when you are still using the amount under that transaction ID not on your next transaction. There you go, so the reason I was given was a brush off. In the meanwhile I called up the toll free customer service and explained my problem and finally someone acknowledged it to be server problem and I was given a complaint number. I asked to speak to the supervisor and I was promised a call back which by the way never materialized. I could not get a line till next day and when I did I heard the same old story of how I was suppossed to have got someone else recharge mistakenly. I was so mad I insisted I speak to the supervisor and I was told he was not avilable. Luckily I know something about call centres so I told the guy that at any time there is always a supervisor and when a customer asks to speak to one you have to get them without any questions. So finally I got someone named Srinvas on line had to explain the whole problem again and was told the same story about mistaken recharge. But by now I got wise and I visited the agent and already had him confirm to his dealer that he never made any such complaint. So I gave this guy the details and asked him to call the agent and call me back. He never did. So next day I called him up and had to go thru the whole crap again got the same excuses and a new complaint number for my trouble. So I gave it a day and called up on June 2. I asked the agent how to get my pre-paid account bill, he explained the process, and I asked him if it is admissable as evidence in consumer court. That was when I got their attention finally, he got me Srinivas on the line and I asked him the same question and he was insisting that it was a long process and useless, I told him it would be better than hearing his excuses again and then he admitted that it was a server problem and I would get my money back and he would call me back with the details of the problem. That call never materialized. I could have forgotten all that happened and put it down to server glitch n bad service but the next thing that was done was by far the worst. By now I had made myself a problem so I was charged for a missed call alert service that I never used and my balance was pushed into negative so that I can be prevented from making calls to the customer service. This was a delibrate, mean and petty action and really hurt me after all I had to go through. Nobody was even apologetic and where they took no trouble to help me, they went to a lot of trouble to bar me from making calls to customer service. So finally on June 4th I got my balance with INR 10 deducted. I called back customer service then and told the guy Srinivas that this is by far the worst service I have ever seen, I don't think he even cared for my opinion. All my friends were unanimous in their opinion that if I hadn't fought so hard I would never have gotten that money back. And now none of them uses Airtel either. It's for you to decide after reading this if you want to use a fraudulent service like this one, that doesn't care to correct or atleast admit it's mistakes and make ammends unless pushed into it.

I have never faced the same problem with any other service I have used before or since. I would never ever get an Airtel connection even if they provide the best coverage in the area I have moved to, because the marginally better coverage may disappear the next day and I would be saddled with the most unprofessional customer service ever.