[Resolved]  Airtel — Unbelievable harassment by airtel - [protected]

Address:	Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600044
Website:	www.airtel.in

I'm sriram subramanian and have been using the landline & broadband service with the number [protected] for 6+ years now with airtel. Have been a prompt customer paying all the bills of airtel and also endorsing airtel services to others over the years.

Below is the sequence of harassment done to me by airtel since june 2016.

Incorrect plan - earlier till february was part of a different plan and in february 2016 added rs.500 topup into the landline plan as per suggestions from telephone service executive which provides free landline/std calls.in june 2016 again as per suggestions from telephone executive changed into rs.1999 which was inclusive of free landline/std calls. Since then have been billed rs.1999 + rs.500 + service tax. I've called the customer care to make right changes to my plan every month and several service tickets have been raised & have never been resolved.
Every time i called the service executive waivered rs.500 and not the service tax and have paid all my bills perfectly without any dues. Every time i had to explain the customer care executive over 30+ mins and no action had been taken.

Shifting of location - on october 1st i had raised a request to change the connection to my newly shifted location. A sla of october 8th was provided to finish this shifting. Had called airtel several times to follow up on shifting only to have no assurances or communication on the same. As a great shock recevied the below email communication with subject - "update on ref. No. 73712162 for airtel fixedline and broadband [protected]_tn" on nov 22nd.

Namaste!
Reference no. 73712162 for your airtel fixedline and broadband [protected]_tn regarding shifting to new address-requests shifting has been successfully processed..
Should you have any queries, please write to us at [protected]@in. Airtel.com
Thank you for being with airtel.
Warm regards,
Airtel customer care

Nobody from airtel has visited myself or anybody from my family in the new location we are residing and no shifting has happened in the last 40+ days since the request.. Adding to this a bill was generated over rs.1999 + rs. 500 + service tax, given your records there was no phone or internet activity in our account since october 1st. Harassment had reached new levels now.

Cancellation of account : with airtel showing no interest to resolve my plan issue and billing me for a connection not even shifted, called customer care on nov 23rd to raise a request for my account cancellation. My cancellation request was taken by customer care after checking and confirming there has been no activity on my account since the shift request (I. E) oct 1st and also took a a request to waive off the bill amount for the service i have not utilized. But i received my bill notification and not any action on the cancellation, again i had to raise another request for cancellation explaining everything to customer care executive who was reluctant to take the request straight away.

Then a service executive from cancellation team called and provided offers in the likes of 75% discount on next six months bill and shifting to be processed right away, with the disappointment i had faced i proposed to waive of my bill to convince that airtel will stand true to its service values, post which will avail the offer and continue with airtel. The customer executive never called back and the next day another executive called to understand why i had raised a cancellation request.

With no action taken, i called airtel customer care again and this time tried to reach a manager cadre, and this time i was successful. The customer care and the manager assured me that the cancellation will be processed and the bill for services i have not availed will be waived, they will take personal care on this request to ensure this case will be resolved and also communicated the account cancellation will happen immediately and bill waiver will happen within a month.

Promptly i have received a physical bill copy in my new residing location for november month as well and clearly my cancellation request stands without action. The harassment continues.

Bill dues collections follow up :

When iam almost mentally was fed up and felt its a torture to to make any further calls to airtel to follow up on my cancellation request and explain the customer service executives, i have started receiving calls from airtel collections team on follow up of my dues. The collection team knows no sense of tone and questions they can ask is abuse beyond imagination for a customer who has paid bills for more than 6 years. Some abuses from them as below when i try to explain them

"how can you not pay the bills?", "why is the bill not paid?", "when are you going to pay the bill?", "pay your bills first".

Summary of harassment, torture, abuse by airtel i have faced.

- dishonest practices of plan change.
- inconvenient processes to handle change or reduction of billing.
- inefficient customer care executives and systems that doesn't help to resolve calls with customer care effective intentionally.
- inefficient and non transparent service ticketing system that doesn't communicate details of the same to the customer.
- breach of sla and no commitment to adhere to compliance to resolve service requests.
- fraudulent and dishonest practices of service ticket closure.
- inconvenient and troublesome processes to handle cancellation request.
- fraudulent activity by sending email on shifting yet no shifting of connection has happened.
- fraudulent billing of services not utilized.
- harassing treatment of customer who have been paid all their bills till date promptly and no process to look back on what went wrong at airtel.
- abusive and illicit communication practices of collection.

I demand airtel to cancel my connection immediately & waiving off the bill amount for services not availed. If this action is not taken with written communication on sla or i receive any further calls from collections i will go to consumer court for all the above reasons quoted.