Incident Reference Number: F582110987

I have been a customer of Airtel from 2007 and I posses two cell numbers and one internet connection from Airtel. I was in US and I returned to India on Monday 2nd November ‘09. I paid all the bills in time till now in and even I was in US, hoping that when I will land in India , I can avail the Airtel service.

Monday:

Immediately after I land, I tried to call my family and I saw my service has been barred for one cell number – the one I was carrying with me though I have a credit balance of more than 2000 INR in my account. I called customer care to know the reason for which my services were barred. I spoke to a customer rep and she told that I needed to submit some documents to them. Submission of the documents has been made a mandate by the Indian Government in some audit. I asked her how Airtel tried to inform me that I needed to submit these documents. She said that Airtel has sent an SMS to me at end of November. I asked the rep to escalate the call to her manager and I spoke to a lady called Lakshmi/Vijay Lakshmi. I was utterly surprised after speaking to her. I asked her:

Did Airtel check whether I received the SMS or not? She said no. OK I can assume that Airtel does not have that much of updated technology to check that may be?!
Airtel sends me junk and promotional postal mails and emails, so why could not Airtel send me a mail this time with real important information. She could not answer.
I asked her that I had another number with Airtel. Why could not they call at that number? She was unable to find my other number, though I get bills for both the numbers together!
If Airtel does not have necessary documents for which they can stop providing services, how was it possible that Airtel needed documents for one number and not the other one which I have – why was the service stopped for only one number and not the other one? She could not answer.
While she told that Airtel did not have to do anything and the government department itself has barred the number (I never believed this), I asked her to give the name of the government department and she told that she cannot give that number to me.
Though I heard an apology for each and every question I asked, I did not hear any plan to resolve this situation. So I asked her to escalate further from whom I can really get a resolution, and she said that her manager is going to call me back within 9:30 AM. In spite of the jet lag, I waited till 3:00 PM to get a call, but never received one. OK, so I understand Airtel operates more like a government office than a private office.

Tuesday:

I called 121 again and I asked for Lakshmi. This lady was unavailable at that point of time. I asked for any responsible person with whom I could talk to. The call was escalated as usual. Now I was speaking to a person called Rajkumar and his number is 9949623202. I repeated the story and he told me that he will enquire with the necessary Airtel department and will get back to me. When he called me back (at least he had the courtesy to give a call back), he said that the service will be reactivated within 2 hours. It was noon by that time and I asked specifically whether the issue will be resolved within 2:00 PM or not. He assured that it will be. He requested me to submit the documents within Tuesday or Wednesday.

Wednesday:

My cell phone is still inactive. Since I did not have my address proof ready and I needed to get that from my HR department of my organization (I am not from Hyderabad and do not have any other address proof), I asked the pick up person to come on Wednesday. I handed over all documents asked for – passport copy, photo and HR declaration of address proof to the pickup person. I signed in a form also. Believe me; the form required the same information which Airtel already has. All information in the form has been submitted with the same documents to Airtel every time I took a number/bought a cell service from Airtel.

Thursday:

My cell phone is still inactive. I called Rajkumar, and he did not pickup the phone. I am sure he deliberately refused to talk as I got his phone busy for at least 5 times and the phone kept on ringing for at least 4 times. I called 121 again. This time I talked to a rep whom I requested to escalate immediately. The call got escalated to a lady named G Kranti. I repeated the same old story and wanted a timeline as I have submitted all documents. She was unable to give a timeline and said that it depends on the backend department and she will not be able to help me out here!!! Also in the incident history that Airtel maintains, Rajkumar did not write anything about activation within Tuesday 2:00 PM!!!

I got a call back from the pickup person and he needed my Landlord’s name. So I assume the documents really did not reach the so called “backend department”!

I really wanted to know:

Most importantly: WHEN CAN I GET MY SERVICE REACTIVATED? A day, a week, a month, a year, a decade … when?
Is it my fault that in spite of submitting all information to Airtel before, still I need to resubmit?
Why one of the number was barred and the other was not. So am I to assume the other number will also be barred in near future and I need to go through all this again?
Please let me know as I NEED my cell phone to work properly. Incident Reference Number: F582110987.

Best
An aggravated Airtel customer

Udit – poor design of fault recording and response systems is not an excuse for shoddy selling.

Idetrorce – who (which post – the original or the follow-up comments) don’t you agree with, and why?

Earlier, while trying for a regular broadband connection, all dealings with Sify, BSNL and others fell through as they insisted on sending a dealer’s employee and I insisted on proper identification documents.

Both Reliance and Tata Indicom have been advertising very visibly about their new wireless Internet service, where all you need is to buy their USB modem (in case of Tata also load a Tata SIM)and plug it into your PC or laptop with no need of any driver, etc and bingo, you’re on the net! They offer a no-obligations demonstration. I thus asked for a demo and offerred to buy the connection if it worked well at my place.

However after repeated calls and repeatedly sympathetic “Sir, I would feel the same if I were you too. This time certainly you’ll have a no-obligations demo within next 24 hours” assurances, it seems there is no stock since the month of July or August. Here is the status, after scores of calls since.

The Reliance NetConnect service first called to say they were only asked to pick up application documents, not demonstrate. Then on ‘next ping,’they said it would be advisable to buy the connection first and I would get a USB Modem in three days, which I could return if it didn’t work, with deductions which were nit clear. Another ping later, they offered to bring a Reliance phone to my residence so that I could be ‘convinced about the signal’ but without connecting the phone to the Net!

In case of Tata Indicom, after n calls and similiar assurances,it seems there is only one demo piece, with one employee and he is in New Bombay. He called to “explain the various plans” that I already knew from the call centre. He then offerred to sell me a connection but was furious when I told him that I was promised a no-obligations demo first!

Further, both companies gave me contact numbers of their effective re-sellers but no names. When I called, I just got an answering machine mesage to leave my number, with no identification. In case of reliance however, I was able to walk into a Reliance Web World centre and get reasonable attention and information, but no delivery committment.

Forget about the man-hours I wasted along with talktime and all that – look at their advertising and man-hour costs thrown on a non-existant service!

Your school/you would have shelled out huge sums of money to learn about basic switching of electricity. God forbid, if you had a problem with those fundas, you would have called their support cell, which would have in turn asked you to refer the support website, containing a glossary and basic examples. Should your query fall beyond them, you would be asked to call the same numbers you did in the first place!

Here is a journal which is using licensed software, wants to respect IPR, is also a charitable trust. I would think Adobe Systems and Wipro would want to encourage this sort of thing instead of trying to make it more difficult for them.