[Resolved]  Airtel Prepaid — problem with recharge while on roaming with prepaid no. [protected]

Hello,

I am a prepaid customer from Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh with mobile no. [protected]

I have been on roaming in UP (west) & NCR since mid-August. I ran out of balance. And received a message from Airtel saying..

"Dear Customer, Incase you do not have enough balance while on roaming,Recharge with RC 222 & get Talktime of Rs.199.27.Standard roaming call charge applicable."

I have got this message very frequently while I have been on roaming. Now I went and got the recharge RC 222 done, but I received only Rs. 2.22 in my main account on 22-Oct-2009. (TransID[protected]. Thus I was not able to make or receive any calls for 2 days.

So, I went to the nearest relationship center and they flat out refused to help me saying this is not a local no. & that I need to contact Airtel Hyderabad and gave me this number [protected] . I was also told that I will have to make STD calls on my expense to get a resolution.

Airtel is a national company and you should be able to help in such cases. The current circle where I am roaming should be able to help roaming customers from other circles.

Anyway, so I started making calls to this number. And I say calls because I have been making calls to [protected] almost 4-5 times daily to get a resolution.

Around 80% times, the call does not connect saying number ([protected]) does not exist. And I used my mother's Airtel phone to call this number.

When the call got connected, I was told I have received Rs.222 in special/dedicated account # 8. I did not want that. I wanted Rs. 199.27 in my main account as per the message sent to me by you.

Anyway I checked & there were Rs.222 credited in the account # 8, but how do I use this account. The executive told me you must have some balance in your main account to be able to use this account # 8. So, I was told to get a recharge of Rs. 55 which gives me around Rs. 46 in my main account.

Now I made some calls and noticed that it is my main account and not the account # 8 that is being charged. So tried to call the Hyderabad customer care number again. When I got through, I was told I can't use this account # 8 while I am on roaming. I have to be in my home circle to be able to use that special/dedicated account # 8. So why did that message indicate to get RC 222 while on roaming?

Plus, what's even better is this account # 8 expires within 4 weeks. So it will expire on 20-Nov-2009. I am not going back to Hyderabad before that. So, in effect I have been cheated out of Rs.222 in the first place and then on the numerous STD calls that I made to your useless Hyderabad customer care number. Now the customer care executives aren't available there anymore. Instead I am asked by the system to send 'Airtel' to 121 and then a generic reply comes, which doesn't improve things anyway.

Yesterday my mother remarked that I have wasted more than the actual amount on this stupid effort to get it resolved. And she is correct. This has cost me around Rs. 500 already.

I am very dis-pleased and urge you to resolve this problem as soon as possible. Either
(a) I should get the Rs.199.27 in my main account and you can take this Rs.222 from account # 8 back which I am not able to use anyway, or
(b) I should be told how to use the account # 8 while roaming. But this should be soon so I can use this account # 8 before it is about to expire.

Please note that my family have been Airtel customers since a long time and you risk losing all o[censored]s to your rivals.

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Yours truly,
Shishir Chandrol