Horror service hall of fame: Airtel

Today we induct the famous “Bharati Airtel” into the “horror service hall of fame”

I am right now in the middle of experiencing “customer service horror” at the hands of airtel, and here goes the horror story.

I got to know my bill amount and last date via SMS/e-mail etc which also said goto airtel.in and pay online. Well before the due date I made 5-10 unsuccessful attempts to pay online. Guess what! I can not even login to my account. The website’s user section is down for days together. And because of other engagements I am unable to pay the bill across the table and the last date pasts by.

Airtel promptly deactivates all my services; No outgoing calls/No outgoing SMS /No GPRS Services (this is the part I use the most). Anyways, my mistake did not make the payment on time.

Day 1: 10:00, I try again on the website, make the payment after trying for 3-4 times (full of user bugs). Payment confirmed, I expected the services to be activated soon after that.

Day 1: 1700 hrs: Nothing happens, I still can not use my phone for anything. I call 121 (anytime anywhere customer service???). First I am promised that within 4 hrs services will be activated, but when I ask why so long and demand faster action, I am told just reboot your phone in few minutes..it will be done..

Day 1: 2000 hrs: Nothing still words. I get an SMS “hope you are happy with resolution provided”. I am thinking “WHERE THE F*** IS THE RESOLUTION”

Day 2: 0800 hrs: 15 hrs and 20 reboots later. Nothing still works, I call 121 again and ask what happened to my “activation”. No proper answer or explanation. Just another promise I have taken your request, it will get done in 4 hrs. I hit the roof, got very angry and screamed at the guy, suddenly he tells he has activated it right away, I can hold his call and try it out. Wow it works!. I hangup the call, thinking “FINALLY THE HORROR IS OVER”

Day 2: 0830 hrs: I open the browser on my Nokia E61i, to access my mails. HORROR again, data services didnt work. They never bothered to see what all services on my account and only activated the calls.

Day 2: 0835 hrs: I dial 121 again, speak to one more joker, waste 10 more minutes of my time, I am told it will get done within 1500hrs (7 hrs more hrs).

At this point I just gave up and dropped the call. The truth is these guys think they have all the power. They don’t give a damn about you, you are just one of the 50 million customers of airtel (or any other company).

But I believe these guys will be in for a big surprise. Things are changing fast and customers continue to hold the real power. I decided to do my bit and share my experience. After this I will also consider switching to vodafone and the options will only get better post number portability…

What do you guys think..let us know via comments…

UPDATE: My data connection did not start working untill 2030 hrs on Day2. I had to call 5 more times before it finally got working. Well now i am writting this update from my nokia E61i.