[Resolved]  Airtel — Airtel - Incompetent and rude staff, poor systems and nightmarish experience with the company

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

Account Number: [protected]

Dealing with Airtel customer service representatives, service centres, as well as nodal officers have been a nightmare over the last month.

My first association with this company started when I subscribed to the airtel fixed line broadband connection (6 month advance rental plan) which as per airtel emails were activated on 19 June 2014. Since they have a billing cycle from 26 - 25 of every month, they sent me a bill which read as 26 May to 25 June and the total payable amount of 7298/-. As I have to submit internet bills to my company for reimbursement, I requested them to send me appropriate bill, which captures activation/ start date of plan and billing period. To my surprise, Airtel does not have a system in place where they can issue such a bill which captures facts correctly. Then requested them to issue me a letter instead stating billing details, plan rental, activation date etc but they could not issue me the same as well. Tired with my efforts, I requested them to cancel the connection. Then 1 rude customer service rep from their Bangalore team called me and asked me to visit the Airtel gallery where supposedly I was to get solution to my problem (details on airtel letterhead). After visiting the gallery, I was told that no bill/ letter will be issued there and I was to contact customer care for the same. Since it was the FIFA world cup time, Airtel too was playing football with me with customer service reps and Airtel gallery passing the buck from one to another.

Finally I decided to confirm my cancellation request and volunteered to pay pro-rata for the no of days I used their service. They took 7 days to cancel the service after all this drama. More so the customer reps told me to pay the entire outstanding amount of 7298/- for using 20 days (from 19 Jun to 9 Jul). Then when I wrote to them an email saying I wont pay a penny if asked to pay the entire amount but I am willing to pay if they rationally send me pro-rata bill, the nodal officer got in touch with me and asked me to pay 1167/- (on email) for 24 days usage. I told them that 24 days is factually incorrect as I used only for 20 days. To this, they agreed (on phone) for me to settle the issue by making full and final payment of some 950/-. I agreed to this and asked them to send me an invoice for this amount with correct details so that I could pay.

I was waiting for this invoice when they sent their representative to my house today to harass us. Further, they called me today and asked for full payment of 7298/-. Some Ashish Patil from the Malad Interface office spoke to me and was exceptionally rude. When I told them that I am already in touch with nodal and appellate officers over the issue, they still insisted on me explaining the issue to them again (which btw I have done at least 20 times now with different airtel reps) They said 950/- payment is like "bheek" for Airtel and they challenged me to withold this payment and face legal action from Airtel.

It is appalling that one of the largest telecom companies in India has such poor systems that they cannot generate appropriate invoices or confirm billing plans on airtel letterheads. Isn't it inappropriate for a telco to charge a postpaid customer without sending appropriate billing invoice. They say that they can only send emails but no proper tax invoices with correct details such as activation or start date/ billing period. I hope the regulators take note of this high-handedness by the company on top of their service deficiency. To make matters worse, their customer service representatives are just not trained well enough to understand customer queries or concerns and some are outright rude.

I am waiting to hear from Airtel on this issue. I have complete record of my email conversations and I hope the recorded conversations are actually recorded and not tampered with by the company. Waiting to receive their notice and drag them to consumer court for harassment and deficiency in service. If there is any lawyer/ expert on this forum who can guide me on the way forward it will be highly appreciated. For the record, I have not missed a single utility/ phone payment over last 8 years and same with my EMI and credit card bills.