[Resolved]  Airtel — Fraud using SIM swap

Address: 110089

Website: Airtel India

My father was defrauded of Rs 21, 000 by a fraudster using SIM swap. He uses an Airtel post-paid connection. Someone called him and manipulated him to raise a request for SIM swap under the pretext o[censored]pgrading SIM from 3G to 4G.

We realized something was wrong when suddenly his phone lost connectivity. We ran to the Airtel customer care center and raised a request to block the new SIM asap. We received zero co-operation and were told that it'll take 4 hours to block the SIM. We called the customer care to expedite. They said SMS service won't work for 24 hours on a new SIM and hence not to worry about any financial fraud.

We have the following questions from Airtel:

1) How come the fraudster was in possession of new Airtel post-paid SIMs without registering them against any customer and submitting any documents for the same? Are your unregistered SIMs freely available in the black market for any anti-social activities? If someone uses such a SIM for any terrorist activities, will you still brush-off everything claiming zero responsibility and saying that you can't trace the SIM or the owner and have no idea how he/ she came in possession of that SIM?

2) When we literally begged the customer care executive in your store to block the new SIM used by the fraudster, why did it require you 4 hours to block the SIM? All the financial transactions happened AFTER our request. How can you claim you have no liability here?

3) Why did your customer care executive give us a false assurance that SMS service can't work on a new SIM for 24 hours and hence there's nothing to worry?

4) Your customer care executive herself confirmed 100s of such cases happening on a daily basis. What actions has Airtel taken to stop this and compensate defrauded customers like us?