| Address: | Bangalore, Karnataka, 560078 |
| Website: | www.airtel.in |
Dear team,
I have been using an airtel prepaid number registered in karnataka circle, since march 2012. Recently i moved out of india. Since then i was not actively using my airtel number. But i was recharging and using it whenever i went back home. The last time i went back to india was in february 2016 and i had recharged the above mentioned number and used it then. From feb 2016 to june, the above mentioned number was not used for any outgoing calls or messages, but incoming messages used to come in the above mentioned prepaid number.
On june 26th, 2016 airtel deactivated my mobile number. This came to my notice only when i tried to send an otp to mobile number. The reason mentioned was non-usage of the mobile number for 90 days. Please note that incoming messages were coming in my mobile number till 25th of june. Still airtel considered my number as inactive.
Having known this, i was trying to coordinate with airtel officials to sort this out and regain my number. I raised a complaint with airtel customer care on july 3rd. My complaint number is [|bal|ref50024277|]. I told them my issue. Customer care guys, rather than trying to sort out the issue, were always replying me with emails in the same format mentioning the reason for deactivation. Even they knew it was not going to help me in any way. I was not ready to give up. When i further insisted them to sort this issue out, on july 4th, they escalated the issue to nodal office, bangalore. Since then i had been talking to officials from nodal office, bangalore. Guys from nodal offices contacted me and enquired the issue. I had to repeat the same story over and over again. This is one issue i faced. Every time, when someone calls me from airtel, i had to repeat the same story. And those guys don’t follow up from what the previous guy talked to me.
A lot of discussions happened and finally on july 7th, i got a call in the morning from airtel. The lady who called me said that, i can purchase a fresh sim in the same number. She asked me to go to send someone to nearest airtel relationship office (Arc) with proper documents and collect the sim. I was rejoiced to hear this. I double confirmed, if this is really true. She said yes. Even an email was sent to me mentioning the above details (Sender: trapti choudhary). As per the email, my father visited arc near my home (Arc shornur road, thrissur, kerala) with a copy of the email. But those guys were not at all aware of this. They said, they were not able to find my number and asked my dad to ask nodal office guys to escalate the issue to them. So i shot an email to nodal office asking them to coordinate with arc guys. But i still haven’t got any proper reply for this. I feel bad for sending my father 3 times believing the false assurance from airtel authorities.
Finally after losing all hope, i escalated the issue to appellate team, bangalore. But even they were not approaching the issue in a proper way to help me. They were more trying to shut my mouth by sending the same emails over and over again. Finally one guy called me today and told me that my number has been allocated to someone else. But i don’t trust this because of many reasons.
* initially i was told that there is a grace of 15 days from the time of deactivation. Within this time, the sim won’t be available for public. I am still under this grace period. So how come this rule changed now?
* when i called initially, one of the airtel guy had told me that the sim was allocated to someone else. But this statement had been changed mutilple number of times. Some times they say the number is gone but sometimes ask me to go and collect the sim. So i don’t trust their word. Maybe airtel guys are thinking, i’ll step back once i hear that my number is fully gone.
* if the number is allocated to someone else, it should be reachable now. I tried to reach the number many times. But it says switch off.
My complaint:
1. Why is the number deactivated if it is not recharged for 90 days? 90 days is too short time. Similar companies like vodaphone give 365 days and another 6 month quarantine time, before the number is deactivated.
2. How can airtel take back a number that has been in use for at least 5 years without a proper notice? They say they had informed me through sms. But if the mobile is not in use, how do they expect that owner of this number would see the message. I really doubt the sincerity with which airtel is sending deactivation sms. Why can’t they try to contact me through any other means like email?
3. Whys is airtel so irresponsible? Why don’t they understand that mobile number is very important in todays. All the services from social networking sites like facebook to economic institutions like banks, pf etc are linked to a mobile number. Secure otp’s are send to the registered number. Having known this, how can they revoke the number so irresponsibly after seeing a non usage of just 90 days?
4. I am going to lose my apple id because my account was linked to my above number. I can only login after entering the otp sent to the above number. I am going to lose all the apps purchased. Is airtel going to take responsibility of this?
Desirable solution:
I want my number back and also answer to my questions above.
Best regards,
Aravind narothe
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