Airtel (Dis)service
Wednesday (23rd May, 2007) morning the news screamed out loud, Airtel has 40 million subscribers! They are the first Indian company to reach that mark and the tenth company world-wide, and all of this in just 12 years. I have been an Airtel subscriber for at least 9 of those years. I would say a loyal subscriber. I have had my share of problems as well, but overall things have not been too bad. There are of course things like service quality of which Airtel has little or no idea. Being an old subscriber one would assume that in case, for some unforseen reason a bill went unpaid (like not having received a printed copy of the bill), the least you would expect is a phone call before service is discontinued. But no, its not to be. The systems are all in place, loyal or not, you miss paying you get disconnected. Its worse when one is travelling and suddenly discovers that the phone no longer works. This has happened to me in the past, I spoke to them and clearly told them that such a thing should not be repeated and that it should go down on record, that I do not wish to be disconnected without having received a call from an executive at Airtel.
On Tuesday, just before their big announcement, I decided to go out of town for a few days. Just as we were exiting Delhi, I asked Jyoti to check my mail on my PDA via GPRS. Mail came through no issues at all. But as soon as we exited Delhi, we also seem to have lost connectivity. I was a little surprised that throughout the drive, I did not get a single call or SMS, not even the numerous “Welcome to {local provider}…” but I didn’t pay attention to it. The reason seems to have been an SMS I sent earlier to discontinue my international roaming. On April 9, 2007 I decided to try the smart services that Airtel keeps advertising and sent an SMS to discontinue my International Roaming (SMS DEV IRR to 121) as it can be activated within a few hours and costs Rs.149/- per month. So in the months when I am sure I am not travelling abroad, may as well save some money. Little did I know it would create a mess like this. How this happened I do not know. All I got was “We are extremely sorry…”. The SMS caused Airtel to also discontinue my National Roaming. Worst part is they just did it without cross-checking with me. Don’t they care about their own revenues? Whenever, I travel domestic, I manage to double my phone charges, so my loss of connectivity was Airtel’s loss as well.
Apart from this current mess, some of the older cribs, I have had are related to GPRS speeds and then of course there is the website:
As a part of our continuous effort to enhance our
services we are upgrading this site so Registration will be not
available for Broadband and Telephone Services/DSL. Kindly call up our
Call Centre (121) for any support.
System is temporarily unavailable! Please try after some time.
I got this so many times on the site, that I have virtually given up using it!
40 million and counting, I just hope they start paying a little attention to all these consumers, specially before the “Unified Access Service License” or in other words number portability.
Cheers…Kishore
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Kishore, I also had a similar experience recently. And I also feel that they do not worry about old customers. And I guess this will continue till we have number portability in India. Airtel knows that you will not want to change your number and so you are stuck. You may also note that they offer you a great bill plan… provided you are a new customer. But if you are an old loyal customer…. then those attractive plans are not for you.
Here is what I faced recently.
I subscribe to their ECS service (for the last 4 years) where my credit card is directly billed by Airtel on the due date irrespective of whether I receive the bill or not. Last week outgoing calls from my phones were debarred because Airtel did not charge my card due to their system error. When I called them, they shamelessly told me that this happened because of a system error and also asked me to pay the bill by visiting their office.
Aseem, you’re so right. This is not only true for Airtel but other companies as well, get a lifetime free Credit Card if you apply for a new one, however, continue to pay the annual charge. The price of loyalty!
Cheers…Kishore
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Aseem is right in pointing out that until we number portability, the telephone companies will not be interested in improving their customer service.
Reliance CDMA has an interesting half way number portability. You tell them your GSM number, e.g. 98ABCDEFGH. They will give you a CDMA number 93ABCDEFGH. When you call from your new CDMA number, the 93 number matches your address book entry in the callee’s phone. S/he would know you are calling.
I know they are providing this service in Delhi.
BTW .. Reliance CDMA is atleast a million times better network than any GSM network we have.
Hey Kishore, another thing is that Airtel’s NOP version of GPRS does not allow third party applications. Why – well, they have no answers.
I am decided about changing my service too finally after being with them for years – something that i didn’t want to do as it risks the fact that 1000s of people have that number but am tired finally – my low blood pressure shoots up every time i talk to them.
R
I have put my number Post paid number in safe custody, with in a span of 2 months I wanted to activate my number, but I spoke to customer case & found that my number is deactivated & send to prepaid to some other customer. I tried sending many mails for past 20 days, but no replies or no call & no status updates from Airtel. I have been promised that it will get activated on
in next 2 days, like that it has extended for 20 days, but no news till now. I keep on sending mails but no response. Airtel is at its poorest service.
Be cautious of putting numbers in safe custody with Airtel. It is hazardous to got for Safe Custody. It is similar to closing the connection.
Airtel promises Rs. 100/= per bill if it is not resolved in time. But they have not kept the words for more than 5-6 times. I have raised some 5 complaints regarding this. But none of the Airtel Customer service people have courtesy to call me back & give me the in formations.
As per the TRAI Rules, even a number if deactivated, that particular number should not be used for 3 months. Even Airtel is not following TRAI rules.
Be cautious with Airtel Services & false promises.
AirTel gprs (Nop, live, mo) sucks, its damn slow!! And they are charging 15rs/day for slow internet
Nitin, I agree its slow. I recently switched to a phone that supports EDGE and speeds are noticeably better. I manage to check mail, read a few RSS feeds, get google maps and some minor surfing. But yes its terribly expensive at Rs.499/month for mobile office.
Cheers…Kishore
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hi, the customer services are so poor that they promise to get an issue resolved but they dont have the courtesy to even sms even more even after quoting the complaint number they say the complaint is not registered . on speaking sternly and asking to put on line with the senior official you get a word on getting the issue resloved. more than 720 rs was deducted from my account
Hi, I am a foreigner trying to establish a business in India. Frankly speaking – the effort I have to put in to get something like an internet or phone connection up and running is already quite something compared to other spots on the globe… But if I need some after sales support – well let me put it this way: It seems every company has a number to decorate their sales flyers. They call it “customer care”, “customer service” and the such. But to me it seems, they have no idea, what a CUSTOMER is and they don’t CARE about a CUSTOMER at all. People, you are getting let down and ripped off permanently. I made my experience with Reliance, Airtel, BSNL, TATA. Never in my life I heard so many lies and got such a shitty service – they are all the same. The guys in the call centers don’t care a shit (well they only care about their Rupees for sitting in their time), their bosses don’t care about a shit (they just care about being the boss of somebody) and if you go up the ladder it’s not changing, until you reach the top, where they only think about new schemes (scams) and new ways to squeeze the rupees out of the people. My god, it’s one thing to go on a shopping spree with all this FDI money and buy the latest technology, but please invest a little into Human Resources Development as well, so somebady can take care of the value creation chain (no, not money creation chain, I mean!) after implementation. Sorry to say: India is not an economic miracle – it is an economic nightmare.
Hi! Michael,
Service is bad in most areas, Telecom is just one that we use so much that they do get the brunt of our complaints. But I do agree with you, training in soft-skills and HR would be more beneficial than just investing more in technology!
We can only hope, that it starts getting better. There was a time we only had BSNL/MTNL and literally had to grovel to get services at least that has changed.
Cheers…Kishore
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Hello Kishore
Yes, true, service is weak in almost every sector – I was just getting aggravated with telecom because I am utterly dependent on it and so I let off some steam when I found this thread dealing with this very issue…
Please take my apologies for my harsh words. I once learned, that as a foreigner one should not critisize a host country…But then it drives me absolutely nuts that I have to face this ever same issues and have to waste so much of my time, energy (and money) on basics that it is getting very hard to focus on objectives. Unfortunately this applies to government-, banking- and servicing institutions in general and does not stop at telecom.
(
I guess this attitude is a relict from past times, when India was a clear sellers market and one had to be grateful to be able to receive a good or a service. But times have changed and minds need to change as well, otherwise this country will go into self destruction mode. Inflow of financing might stop one day due to whatever reason and if India has not learnt to self sustain its economy (and that also means valuing its consumer base) by that time – well, then goodbye…
So in the end it is not really just the question of investing into soft skills, but also of building attitude and this might be a sociological issue rather than a corporate one.
I do not have any recipe but it would be a good starting point to publicly discuss the implications of such a fast economic growth and how it impacts culture and environment. India really has the potential to become a very decent marketplace, but only if people cooperate and do not take advantage of each other. Might sound a bit philosophical, I know, but I have learnt from Indian traditions that caring for each other is a high held value and unfortunately I see this thrown away quickly in modern times on the quest for fast and maximised earnings. My plea to the people of this great nation would be: don’t try to imitate western standards, but CREATE proprietary Indian standards! You have the potential to make it better than it has been done elsewhere…
Already on the edge of going overboard, I conclude at this point. Wishing you all the best with your blog and many happy readers!
take care
Michael
Michael:
It’s not always bad. I just fought an apparantly losing battle with my bank (ICICI) and Airtel, trying to pay my bill. Just as I was about to commit what I would have called justifiable homicide, I decided to call Airtel one more time, and vent.
What I got was an extremely sweet lady who understood the problem, solved my payment problem by sending me to visabillpay.in, then booked a complaint to airtel and icici about the issue I have had, then personally called the next level up to make sure that the complaint has registered and is being addressed, then called me back and confirmed that airtel had received the payment, and gave me the refence numbers for the complaint for both icici and airtel.
Wow!
And I didn’t even get her name, which means that I can’t send in a recommendation for what I would call the sweetest and most pleasant customer service person I have ever dealt with. incredibly patient, never aggravating, and very very helpful.
I hope they never promote her, so that more people can get to deal with her rather than the kind of ^%$$@@@ we have been dealing with.
Atul
Wow, Atul, that seems to be a person who takes her job seriously and who is competent at her task!
In contradiction to your hope, I hope she is getting promoted, so she can inspire and guide a whole team – or better, the whole company – towards this level of competence.
and … considering your experience… maybe cloning in humans would not be such a bad thing…
Best
Michael
Tell me about Airtel cheating tricks. I am convinced they do not have human intelligence manning their helpdesks. This is the only way they have become India’s largest ISP!
For past 3 weeks, I am asking them to revert wrong charges placed on International Roaming. Even after showing them email sent BY Airtel to me, confirming the start and stop dates, they merely parrot in every email— We are not in receipt of your earlier request to stop IR, the charges cannot be waived. I mean, WTF? Can they not read English or are they calling me a liar?
Escalating to Nodal officers usually gets you a “pity” waiver. After many weeks, they will waive off the Rs.99 or so that you contest (more on principle, than for profit). They will still not accept or apologize, the girl from “customer excellence” will merely agree to the waiver. The system will maintain a high level of Moronity. Customer Care is too profitable to jeopardize by injecting “intelligence”!
Great post.
Vidooshaks last blog post..Common Sense has No Nationality
Vidooshak,
The problem is not just Airtel, its with a lot of service providers. Unfortunately, the situation does not seem to be improving in any way. As of now I have no cribs for Airtel any more since they sorted out the mess they created but who knows it may be back to haunt me or any one else for that matter.
Thanks.
Cheers…Kishore
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Hi All,
I am very unsatisfied with airtel services and would advise not to use airtel services being a Mobile connection. Digital TV, Broadband. All are reacting like Hell. This is very Pathetic service provider. Even Customer care, Nodal officer or Appellate authority does not know how to talk to a customer and there is no other escalation point other than appellate authority. No one had answer to my question. I am using all services from airtel and in a process of disconnecting all of them (3 Mobiles, One landline, Broadband and Airtel Digital TV).
Thanks
Deepak Kansal
hi all,
my international roaming charges for 5 days in UAE with limited usage of my mobile is a whopping 31,000 bucks – yet to receive the official bill – but will be interesting to note the contents of the bill.
I am customer of Airtel since last 5 years. I was quote satisfied with service, but for these some months I am irritated. They start some stupid ‘FREE’ songs service, some blog service which I never use or will like to use. Then after some 48 hours they say to discontinue the service send a SMS saying stop otherwise you will be charged rs. xyz/month. what’s this? Now a days when I call the customer care they charge 50 paisa/3 minute [never experienced but they caution me before handling me to be harassed by customer care
]. They should improve other wise it’s not at all difficult these days to switch to other provider.