Airtel

Hi All,

My name is Ganesh and I got an Airtel prepaid connection 3 Weeks back, (9632623069) When I went to Airtel shop (They care only selling and not providing service to their customers) the person at Airtel told, "Take a connection sir, before you fill the form your connection will be activated"

Ya, of course as they told, my new Airtel connection got activated before I filled the form. I felt great about Airtel, without knowing their tricky play.

Got a new connection, happily I was using the same number for 3 weeks, after that I got a call from a guy saying that he is from Airtel and he wants to do Address Verification, I was in my office and I told him how to reach my place. After that there was no call or message from him. “I really don’t know why he came and what he did”. 3 days after that (12th December) I was traveling out of Bangalore and I got a message from Airtel as below.

“Dear Customer,
We are unable to verify address, listed with us. Since verification is mandatory as per Government rules, your calls will be barred today.”

Just few minutes after this message my outgoing and incoming (I don’t know what logic it is) also got barred. The next day morning when I reached the place early in the morning where I went for my friend’s marriage, where I don’t know anyone, I was not able to contact anyone till the city woke up.

One good thing with Airtel prepaid is you cannot contact your customer care from your mobile, I did a big R&D to find how to contact the Airtel customer care from my mobile, the first two days I failed finding out that and I called customer care from coin booth, almost after talking to them for 2 hours (dropping the coins one by one) neither they were able to help me in activating my connection nor able to tell me how to contact the customer care from the mobile phone.

Later I found that you can reach them by calling 121 2329 who will know this, I had to go through all the menus that they have, which took almost 2 hours for me.

Two days went like this in an Alien place with out outside world contact except for talking to the SO CALLED “CUSTOMER CARE”, who cannot do anything at all except for telling “We are sorry for the inconvenience you are facing sir”. Atleast one guy managed to tell me that my documents were not submitted by the Dealer from whom I have taken the connection and he added that only if I submit the documents my connection will be activated, that was on Sunday and I was not in town and I cannot carry all my documents with me wherever I go. So I told him, I’ll submit those documents on Monday and asked him to activate the connection, finally the call was transferred to again SO CALLED “FLOOR MANAGER” I didn’t see any big difference between customer care agent and the floor manager, except for the polished way in which the floor manager told me the same what the agent told. Successfully I reached Bangalore on Monday and I went to the Airtel shop where I bought the connection and I asked him about my connection. He did so much of R&D and pulled out so much of data from their again SO CALLED “Number Management System” and he told that the documents have not reached Airtel, is it my mistake that the Airtel dealer has not submitted the documents to Airtel. He asked me to submit the documents again and I did that the same day. He told your number will be activated by EOD. I was waiting for that EOD (Can any one tell me what actually End of the Day means) to happen but that didn’t happen. The next day I went there he said it will be done in two hours or by again EOD. He gave me his number and asked me to call after 2 hours, when I called him first time he picked the call saying that it will be done in another 2 hours. After that he started avoiding my calls (since I was calling from the same number it was very easy for him). The next day I went to Airtel office, that particular guy was not there then I had to explain the whole story to another female who promised me that it will be done again “EOD” that also didn’t happen.

The particular Airtel Shop is in Cunningham Road.
Few Questions:
1. Is this Airtel’s mistake or its customer’s mistake.
2. Just for the sake of advertisement they activate the number in few minutes and saying that it is a Government rule they de-activate it again.
3. Why do they have a Customer care who can only say “We are sorry for the inconvenience you are facing sir”. What really they can do?
4. Why should Airtel have a Dealer who is not responsible to the Customers and also to Airtel.
5. When I tried calling my number from a landline I got a message saying that “The Airtel Customer Has barred his incoming calls, Please call later” why is this message when I have not barred anything.
6. Which Department in Airtel is responsible for these activation process.


Ganesh
9632623069 (This number is of no use)