Hello
I traveled abroad last week and all my financial activities are tied to my airtel number. The number suddenly stopped working on day 2 of my visit and has been unresponsive since. (It worked perfectly fine for first 2 days).
I get an error of 'device not registered' when I try to troubleshoot using my airtel app. Similar errors show up when I try to do ANY BANK TXN, on UPI apps or through my bank app which is the biggest consequence of this issue. I believe this means that the sim device is not registered (not my phone device which some support agents tried to imply). HOW COULD AIRTEL GIVE ME A COMPROMISED SIM? THIS SHOWS A GRAVE VULNERABILITY IN AIRTEL'S SECURITY AND SUPPORT.
This sim was given to me only last week just before I left the country by an Airtel agent (Name - Akshay Gharat, ph - [protected]) who came to my house after I raised a request on my Airtel app to port my number from postpaid to prepaid. I explicitly explained to him I will be in abroad for at least 6 months. He assured me that the sim will be functional in 2 days without doing anything extra. He also told me nothing extra is needed for international roaming. He took 300rs from me which is not reflecting anywhere on my Airtel app. Of course, now this person is not reachable to give any clarification on the situation. I AM GENUINELY CONCERNED THAT THIS NUMBER COULD NOW BE USED BY THIS ROGUE AGENT FOR UNAUTHORISED ACCESS TO MY BANK.
I have done multiple recharges already to make this work, as instructed by multiple different Airtel support agents each time I try to call for my issue. The total is amounting to more than 1000rs and none of it has worked. And still if I call support, they tell me to do more recharges. What cheap set of trouble shooting instructions have they been given? I'm literally begging and borrowing money from friends in order to do these recharges and to support myself financially here.
I have assured their support multiple times that I have done all basic troubleshooting to make sure the issue is not on my side. I have provided all relevant screenshots of my phone and sim settings and money deductions to their support and still nothing is done. I'm financially blocked in a foreign country and it is sad to see airtel taking it so lightly.
Airtel's negligence has made one big soup of incoherent instructions given by multiple random agents who are not coordinated even among themselves. I've tried to contact airtel almost 12 times now in the past 4 days through different means and had to explain the issue from scratch each time, only to get different basic instructions from them like restart your phone, restart your sim, change network settings, change device, activate int roaming again, recharge your phone, etc etc etc. Even after I tell them I've already tried all of these, they tell me 'try one more time', because of which I'm constantly throwing money at recharges and nothing has worked. None of the agents can tell why.
Among all the support agents that I have contacted (there are too many to count by now), the INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT AGENTS ARE EXCEPTIONALLY ARROGANT and they were of no help at all. Kept implying I must've done something wrong and refused to connect me to anyone who could give more insights into my situation. One of them even hung up halfway through the call. I am so shocked at their lazy and entitled behavior.
Airtel customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.