Its a Hobson's choice I guess. Review on Airtel Mobile Operator

Well, first let me clarify that I am not one of those 'know-it-all' kind of people about cellphones and service providers and schemes and loopholes etc....like every alternate person seems to be.

I bought my first cell last september... the only reason being now I really really needed it..... so I bought a piece and an Airtel Prepaid card.

I bought prepaid because I dont want be bothered once I start using it. I needed it urgently. I was adviced by a friend to try and get the Airtel MTV card which has some excellent offers and discounts on talk rates...but is getting out of production.

So I managed to get the MTV card and recharged it for 400 bucks... I was shocked to get only 240 worth talktime but thats the best one....if u use 330 rupees refill u just get 180!....

anyways I called up the cust support to find out about the rates and such details. They said that since the MTV card is not under existence anymore my plan is converted to 'Airtel plan ONE' and she started to explain to me the rates on that.

I was actually irritated for lack of intimation about the plan conversion. I was assuming all the rates and schemes flaunted on the SIM card packet to be in effect.

But then she explained that as a compensation I have three months of free 'TD pack' which basically meant that STD calls would be very cheap (sorry cant remember the rates but was around two rupees). And so I just let things be. Please understand I am a simple man...I find these things too unnecessarily complicating.

Now comes the worst part....something you all should know before getting an Airtel connection. THEY WILL NEVER TELL YOU BEFORE STARTING A SERVICE THAT HAS EITHER ENDED ITS FREE PERIOD OR THEY WILL JUST START A SERVICE OF THEIR OWN'.

Their favourite of course is the STD pack. I found 50 rupees just slashed frm my account one fine day..they say my STD pack is not free no more.So I told them I dont need it anyway.Of course the 50 bucks are drained forever. Whatever.

But surprise...They suddenly decide that I have been gravely wronged and give my 50 Rs back!..cool...but they take it back again.....so now the 968876737th call to cust care who explain that I made an STD call so they activated it!.

Now pls note that I dont need this damned STD pack to make calls...it just makes my calls a rupee cheaper. Again I give up on them..

So the next month they deduct the same money again! I call them up and they say there have been no records of a deactivation request. so I give another request..they ask for just 72 hours...no problem.Next month...yeah right...again.

But this time I gave them a piece of my mind and the frustrated agent said his manager will call me in one hour....which he never did. so the strategy I adopt this time around is that I give a deactivation request every weeek...and now they say it is....hopefully next month it wont be the same....

And now for another interesting part....GPRS & MMS. I call them to ask the rates of GPRS..they say its free.awesome.I requested for activation and they sent the settings in 72 hrs like they said.

Now wait a minute....they also tell me that as of now Airtel allows access to only their homepage..which is obviously full of pics and screensavers for sale.But yours truly is a very curious person and I tried google.com....worked! so went to the most popular wap site... tagtag.com..worked.

For 3 months I used gprs which was very very slow during the day but wat the heck. I downloaded all the possible stuff I could. For free of course. But my dear open-eyed friends, pls note that a month back they sealed the loophole and now u REALLY REALLY cant access any other site except their homepage which sux bigtime. So now I just shutdown my GPRS ... atleast it will reduce the radiation...bah..sour grapes.

And MMS..... wat MMS? there is no MMS in Airtel.no free no paid no nothing.

Another bigtime irritation is the billion a minute SMS advts they send. I called to block it once but she said they cant. So I called again a month later and they said they will.Now I dont get advt.weird. however they now send important looking 'service messages' which is actually a ploy to get u to hit the download option which will basically drain ur balance and leave you with a silly download...dunno wat it is though..not that I am interested anyway.

So here I am stuck with this card which is bearable only because the network is good and every time I delve into the deep and dark jungle of rates and pulse rates and usage statistics etc...I feel Airtel turns out a bit cheaper.

Thats what I have experienced....I hope that was useful to u people. Conclude wat u want out of it. but please gimme some feedback.