I’ve been a customer of Airtel for a long time. I use Airtel DTH and Airtel Broadband services. I was adequately satisfied with their services until two months back. Why wouldn’t I be? I mean they have only a few issues. Like I’d never request for PC Secure- a paid antivirus service, but they would activate it anyways. But what the hell? How would they take care of their share prices otherwise? They have a moral duty to make profits to make the Indian economy running as we have a moral duty to pay them for services that we don’t subscribe. However, the dissatisfaction grew over the past two months.
I use internet heavily to surf, blog, watch videos and upload my personal projects to my Amazon server. The 1 mbps connection that I had subscribed initially was not adequate enough for my usage hence I made a service request to the Airtel customer care to change my plan to a 4 mbps one. And for the next 2 months, I would be damned to hell.
I got a confirmation call from the Airtel customer care assuring me that my plan has been approved and I should get speed upto 4 mbps beginning from my next billing cycle. The cycle started and I did not get what I was assured. I called the customer care to complain about it. I was given a service request number. Within two days the issue was resolved and I was getting incredible download speed. 4 Mbps! I was so rich. Only for a while.
Within 12 days I started getting reduced speed. When I called the customer care to check out, I was told, that my plan had not been migrated due to some unknown technical reasons. I was given a request number. AGAIN. Few days later, the issue was resolved. I was happy. ONLY FOR A WHILE.
They would reduce my speed, I’d complain and they’d restore it. This went for 2 months. A rational and a patient customer as the rest of the nation I only asked them when I could hope the issue to be resolved. Every time they would promise that somebody will call me up from their technical team. So far I’ve got only 1 call.
Finally, I warned them that if they do not get back to me as they promise, I would file a consumer complaint in court. They apologized and promised me again that this time they would get back to me. As usual, they have not.
Finally I’ve asked help from VakilSearch. I sincerely think that if I do not take this matter up, not only I’d let myself down, but also I’d let down thousands of other customers in this nation. It is not just about money and the quality of service. I have not been given the due respect as a customer. I feel that I must fight for my respect and respect of thousands of other customers.
What you’ve experienced with Airtel Broadband (activating services that one has never signed up for) is similar to the harrowing experience that a number of Airtel mobile subscribers suffer from, including me.
Do me a favor, if possible, please ensure that you file a complaint/litigation/whatever it’s called suing them for such actions encompassing all their services and not only Airtel broadband (I don’t know if that’s possible)
Also have you researched about any similar cases filed by consumers in the past?
No, I’m rather a novice in this field. This is the first time that I’ve gotten to the point that I could not bear this attitude of a service provider, this arrogance.
I’ll share my experience in this blog once I get the results of this legal notice.
hey soumitra, I’ve had the same experience with Airtel on my mobile. they activate some plan randomly and then switch me back when I request them. The request-switch cycle kept on going for around 15 times until I just got fed up and stopped requesting any more.
I wish there was an easier way to file complaints against telcos wherein the results of the complaints are made public and the guilty shamed by significant financial penalty. I feel that’s the only way they’ll respond since that will hurt their reputation and what they want most – cash.
I got fed up myself many a times. This is the trick they play. They know that the consumers are gonna give up after sometime. But this time I did not give up. Mostly because their arrogance had pissed me off totally. They have no respect for their customers, which has offended me. I could not stay quiet. As I have mentioned in the post, I’m doing this not just for me, but for everyone else. And I’m going to write about it, when it comes to an end. Share this post, so that more people could get involved and get to know what happens after the legal notice.
Soumitra,
If you are going to go the crowd-way asking petitions or contributions from others, I’m in.
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Another ripped off customer
Akash
What India needs a strong judiciary system and punish the corporates for mistakes like this. Go ahead with the complaint, and hopefully, you will get a resolution very soon.
I was facing issues with my broadband earlier, and I publicly criticized airtel, after which it got resolved to some extent, but after a few times, they have now started just ignoring the complaints.
This will not change, with the kind of laws we are having. We might have to start a movement to make the corporates responsible else pay up heavy fine for inconvenience caused.
Hey. I guess you should just contact nodal officer for your region. Just call him and he will take care of this matter. I did this once to Big TV and then I got a call from Big TV regional office solving my issue.