[Resolved]  Airtel Data Card — Service failure and Wrong Bill

My Name is Narendra Rajwanshi, I had Purchased Two Data Cards for my relatives on 27-Jan-2009 from Airtel shop (Vile parle E), receipts attached herewith. These were mainly bought to work from home and not for just home email and surfing purposes.
As per the plan(Plan 350) the Data services are for unlimited hours and 500MB download. This was clearly asked and clarified with Mr Rishi – There is no restriction on timing and data download in 500Mb was clarified by Mr Rishi.

These got activated in a day or two and were working fine till 5th Feb 2009. From 5th it developed problems and there was no connectivity available, and the work from home was severely suffering. A Complaint was made to customer care but no action was taken for 3~4 days. Initially Customer care said that there was a port failure at your end but finally they accepted there was some authentication problem at their end. CCare said that they would send some one at place but no one turned up.

Finally we went back to the gallery and explained the problem to Mr. Rishi, and he said to contact customer care only and again trying the same there was no solution to the problem. We came back again to the Airtel Shop (Vile Parle E) and they changed the SIM on 9th Feb, saying there might be some problem with the SIM. (Receipt for this new SIM – given FOC is attached alongwith.)

Even after replacing the SIM, the problem still remained, and finally we went back to return the Datacards and ask for a full refund (Rs. 7200 for both datacards). After a lot of argument (Mr Rishi) agreed to give the full refund next morning. Already 10~15 days had passed without any solution to the problem and we could not stop our Work, Hence we purchased new Tata – Indicom datacards which worked really well and continuing with the same till today.

Mr Rishi meanwhile called up (Mr Vishesh) who claims to be Data solutions Head for Mumbai region. He sent some of the guys to inspect saying we cannot simply refund without inspecting the full problem. After a day or two he called up and said the services are resumed and kindly check, but we were clearly demanding our refund, which now Mr Rishi and Mr Vishesh made a U-turn and said cannot be given as it is not in the Company policy.

We simply stopped following and continued with Tata Indicom datacards. To the Surprise and SHOCK, the Airtel gallery (Vile parle E) also uses Tata-Indicom datacard.

After couple of weeks a bill was delivered with a shocking Amount of Rs 2657 for one card and Rs 613 for other. The Data transferred for the first card is only 486MB and 226Mb for the other. Not a single data card has crossed the limit of 500Mb and we had used only for a week or two.

We went back to the gallery (Vile parle E) and asked for the clarification of the same. Mr Rishi was unable to clarify the same, He consulted Mr Vishesh and he kept on saying “jitna use kiya hai utna bill ayega”. I Immediately asked to disconnect the services, for the same Mr Rishi replied you will have to pay the bill first and then only disconnection request will be taken, I replied I will not pay a single Paise.

Post the same I enquired about the Billing details from CustomerCare and they explained some Complex logic of how it is done. Every session on internet is of 2Mb, which is charged like Rs15 and for every new session even if download is not full 2Mb it will be charged Rs.15 and deducted from the 500Mb quota. Like this the First 500Mb is free and post that every session is charged Rs.15. This is Ridiculous and I have not seen any data services like this to happen. And More importantly this is not communicated by anyone in Airtel gallery nor it is present on the Airtel site. This is absolute Fraud.

Now I have been getting calls to pay the bills and also a letter from Airtel that if bill is not paid a legal notice will be sent.

I demand immediate Refund of my Datacards and immediate stop on the calls and the letters. Else I will approach the Consumer Court and take necessary action on Airtel.


Narendra Rajwanshi
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