Airtel — Horrible Joining Experience with Airtel

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

Dear Sir, After Vodafone almost openly robbed me for the services I never subscribed for, I decided to move to Airtel when a tele-caller offered me a package that promised “Lifetime 1GB/moth 3G free internet”. Finally that offer turned out to be a hoax. But determined to leave Vodafone network, I still accepted the offer to port my number to Airtel. After submitting the required documents and waiting for the stipulated 5-6 days of porting time, I received a message from 1901 “Namaste! Request Validated by Donor and Porting Time:[protected]reads 20th September 2014), Time 23:30.00.000+05:30.” That was a parting gift from the Vodafone as they switched off my connection exactly at 23:30 on 20th September 2014. As promised by the Airtel executive I was waiting for next 2 hours to get my number ported to Airtel and my new SIM was expected to start. Nothing happened. I called Airtel customer care and checked if there is any problem. They asked me to follow some procedure (take SIM out… Re-start your mobile…. Call on … etc etc.). I did that but nothing moved. Hence I called customer care again at 7:05 to check the status. They informed me that there is some technical problem because of which we could not activate the SIM, but it will get activated in next 4 hours. I was waiting for 4 hours, nothing happened. I followed the same procedure… no results. Hence I called again to customer care at 11 AM. The girl had absolutely no clue what she was talking about. She was asking me all irrelevant questions – ”Have you submitted the documents to Airtel?” “From where did you buy the connection?” “Do you have the name and number of the person who picked up the papers from?” (for those who do not know the procedure of porting – The receiver (Airtel) sends the request to donor (Vodafone) to stop the services after checking everything that is needed for the subscription). And then started the roller coaster ride. As I started escalating the issue in the customer care the higher authority started giving me the larger timelines. Finally “so called” last authority gave me 24 hours of time to get the number activated. I am still waiting for the activation. Where is TRAI that has given mandate to every service provider to restore the services within 2 hours (or 5 hours – whatever it is, it has been breached). I fear to escalate this issue to even higher authorities as they may give me 2-3 days’ time to solve this issue. So here I am, midst of an important project where my team members have to speak to me regularly; they can’t. I wish to go back to the old villain Vodafone; TRAI would not allow me. I would like to dump Airtel as well, but I can’t do that for next 3-4 months…. I am at fix. Thank you. Yogesh Shendye Phone in Fix - [protected]