| Address: Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
I am an Airtel Digital TV customer for more than 3 years and was having South Super Value Sports package. 2 months back, with informing me, Airtel changed my package to another package which resulted in many channels being removed from my package. When I contacted the customer care, they simply asked my to switch the package to another one, so I was forced to pick a more expensive pkg South Economy Sports, which had ESPN, Star Sports, Star Cricket channels. Now, within 2 months, again they have removed these channels (without reducing the rate of the package) and now I am being asked to change to Mega pack(the most expensive of the lot) to get these channels or opt for a top-up for Rs. 50. Airtel has failed to deliver even the basic promise of service, and their redressal mechanism is the most terrible with the highest disregard for the customer concerns.
Thank you for your response.
Your folks did contact me and for a while I really thought my issue is going to get fixed. But unfortunately it did not happen that way. Below is the update:
A Final Update
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On Monday 19th Nov 2012, I received call call from Airtel. The Airtel person requested me not to terminate my account and promised me to credit my account for the amount overcharged and reactivate my account with the package change as I originally requested. Because of the investment I made on the HD box, I reconsidered my earlier decision to terminate my Airtel DTH account and agreed with him to reactivate my account. The person then calculated the credit amount and called me back again to inform that a credit was given and the issue is resolved.
Since I was away from home at the time of the call, I could not verify immediately if my service was activated. But as consistent with Airtel support, my Airtel DTH service never resumed and I still got the same error code 6. I waited for one more day and hoped for the issued to get fixed and tried again on Tue, 20 Nov 2012, but the result was same. I verified my Airtel account and confirmed the credit was indeed given. I then called Airtel helpdesk number (121) again and after jumping hoops like "our server is down just now. Please call after one and half hours" or "sms HR to blah..blah.." and after much persuasion, got to speak to the supervisor. After explaining the whole history to yet another Airtel person for the nth time, he clarified that the package change was not actioned and that I need to top up my account in order to do that. I was puzzled why I was not told this on Monday itself by the guy who gave the credit back and promised to solve the issue. I was told that unless I top up more money this issue will not get resolved.
Conclusion:
That was the last straw and after waiting patiently for about 10 days without DTH service from Airtel (including Deepavali day), I decided to quit as Airtel DTH customer. It is a shame that what started as a simple mistake lead me to take this extreme step. So much of time, money, effort and energy wasted from both sides to arrive at a loose-loose situation.
Regards,
Lakshman.
PS: I am beginning to think that the issue here right from the start could be that for a package change to take effect, one has to have certain minimum balance.