My husband had activated the airtel secure handset protection plan on his samsung a50 mobile and unfortunately the mobile screen got damaged in an accidental fall in office.
Description: he was sitting on a chair at 11:30 am (24 feb 2020) reading an e mail on his samsung a50 phone, and someone startled him from behind. The phone slipped from his hand and fell on the floor face down (Screen facing down). When he picked it up the screen had some cracks and all he could see was some rainbow colors on the screen except for the right side which had some cracks. After that he picked up the phone, took out the sim and put it on his other phone so that he could raise the claim on airtel secure.
1. We tried raising the complaint online on airline portal but the application had some error, so we had to go to an airtel store (Which is pretty far from where we stay).
2. The customer care executive at the store clearly said that he cant help us, and we would have to email the details to [protected]@teamhgs.com and [protected]@teamhgs.com. We did all this the same day (Including attachments of the phone picture/imei number/damaged part. Etc) when the phone was damaged (I. E. 24 feb 2020).
3. There was no response from airtel for 2 days and even after multiple follow-ups, we got a generic email on 26 feb 2020 to send the email to the nodal officer (Which we did on the same day itself).
4. After this, we made so many calls asking for an update, but there was absolutely no response from airtel for 4 days.
5. On 03 march 2020, airtel responds asking to send an email with detailed description of the incident and all the documents and pictures (Including "one assist" this time). Same thing gets repeated the next day where they ask us to send the email with all the details (This time even more elaborately).
6. Same day, in the evening, one assist calls and asks us to do the same thing on the airtel website/application once again (But guess what, the airtel app again has some error).
7. All this with endless phone calls with customer care executives, and explaining the story to each one of them from start till that day every time (Not sure if its understood, but trust me its so frustrating to do that, when you are in office) and in case you missed the airtel call, then you dont get an update (So you cant miss their call, even though you are in a meeting and even though they have an alternate number to reach).
8. Not only this, sending so many emails and writing the incident description and uploading the pictures (Sometimes on email, sometimes on app) is also very irritating, as he didn't even have a proper phone (Not even mentioning how challenging it was to manage everything without a phone for so many days and not knowing what to do).
9. By now, we had lost all the patience. But finally, we get a call after a couple of days informing that his claim is rejected (Reason: there is no external factor involved in the incident).
What is with these people? Will anyone, in a conscious state of mind, just damage their phone? Obviously, something or some activity triggers any incident to take place.
Our frustration with airtel is not just because they rejected the claim (That is definitely there because it just seems so illogical to give that reason to a customer). But our frustration is about the mental, emotional and physical stress that airtel guys put us through in those 10-11 days.
We hope, the consumer forum here understands the situation. If not, we would at least like to make other people aware of the problems/ issues/ challenges that we had to face as airtel customers.
Airtel customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.
