Airtel Customer Care Executive's Mistakes

Airtel Customer Care Executive's Mistakes

This incident happened to me four years ago. I am basically from Kerala. I got admission for my Engineering Degree in a college in Chennai. So obviously I had to stay in a hostel. It's the first time I am going to stay away from my parents. I was little home-sick in the beginning but got adjusted to the hostel life after sometime. What really helped me was the Cell Phone that my parents got me. They used to call me daily and will talk with me for 15 20 minutes. I took an Airtel Connection because my cell phone had a GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) facility and only Airtel was providing mobile internet for prepaid customers. They were charging Rs 20 for 24 hour duration. You can download as much as you want and you can connect your mobile phone to the computer or laptops and browse the internet. The speed of the internet depends on the model of the mobile phone you are having. They call it Mobile Office' for that facility. They have another facility called Airtel Live'. There you can browse pictures, animations, videos, ringtones, news, etc for free. You need to pay them only if you download any content from the Airtel Live site. So I was enjoying the life in hostel with the help of all these things.

However, it was short lived. Each year we need to change our room in hostel. This time I was allocated a room where the range for Airtel is very less. I need to keep my mobile phone always near the window where there is a much better range than anywhere else in my room. Due to this range problem my parents and friends used to complain that my cell is always not reachable. One of my friends told me about the Miss Call Alerts' facility. If someone calls to my cell phone when my cell phone is switched off or when I don't have range it will send me a SMS (Short Message Service) that this number lets say 9999999999 tried to call me at 0930 hours. This is the kind of service that is going to help me a lot. So I decided to activate the Missed Call Alerts' facility. They charged Rs 15 per month .I called the Customer Care and asked them how to activate the Missed Call Alerts'. They gave me the instructions on how to do it. I had noted down everything they had told me on a notepad and as they had instructed me, I had to send a SMS with a particular code word to a particular number. They charged me Rs 3 for sending that SMS. After sometime I got a SMS from them telling that my Email facility was activated and this is my user name, password, etc and instructions on how to send emails using SMS. They charged me Rs 30 for that service.

I called the Customer Care and told them that they had given me the wrong information and I had activated the email facility, which is of no use to me and I had lost my money. Customer Care person asked me to hold for few seconds till he checks my details. I had to hold for sometime. After sometime he came back and told me that he is sorry for the things that happened to me and he doesn't have the power to take a decision on this issue. So he told that he will forward my call to the higher authority who can help you with this issue. My call was forwarded to a higher authority person. After waiting for sometime he attended my call. I explained to him all the things that happened. Then he said that he will verify the conversation between me and that customer care person who gave me direction to do. If the fault is on his part, my money will be credited to my account within 48 working hours. I thanked him and kept the call. No money was credited to my account even after 72 working hours. So I called to the Customer Care to know about the status of my complaint. They said that they will be crediting Rs. 30 to my account within 24 working hours. I thanked him and kept the call. But no money has been credited to my account even after 24 working hours. So I called them again. Then they said it will take another 24 working hours because one of their servers is down for maintenance. I said ok and disconnected the call. Still the same result.

Whenever the deadline they have given to me has expired, I'll call the customer care to know the status of my complaint, and then they will tell some lame excuses. It went on like this for few days. Then they blocked me from calling to the customer care. Actually I didn't realize that they had blocked me. I kept on calling to the customer care number but no one attended my calls. So I tried calling from my friends number, then they attended the call. I told him the reason why I called, and then he said it will take another 6 hrs and at the end I asked him why I'm not able to call to customer care number from my number. Then he hesitantly told me that my number was blocked because I had called the customer care so many times. If that is the case, what is the meaning of having a customer care centre? I asked him the same question; he was not able to answer back properly but said some rubbish and disconnected the call. Next time when I tried to call using my friend's number I am getting the same response, I got from when I tried calling from my number. Then I understood that someone is keeping a watch on me and kept blocking all the numbers that I use to call to the customer care centre. It is obvious that the customer care executive who gave me the wrong information will be doing all these things because it will be a black mark for him if they refund the money.

After few days, I had a party at my friend's house in Santhome. The Airtel's Regional Head Office is in Santhome is on the next street. Therefore, I went there and told him the full story. He is behaving as if I am telling him a funny story. It was like an insult to me. If even people at the head office are treating the customer like this, you can imagine about the customer care executives on phone. However, this person removed the block that prevented me from calling to the customer care and said that he will refund Rs 33, including the SMS cost. I thanked him and left. I simply called the customer care and enquired about the new recharge offers available to me just to know whether the block had been removed or not. However, they blocked me again the next day evening. I was vexed and I stopped calling to the customer care asking for the refund.

After few days, I went to my native place, while there I noticed that my balance keep decreasing and it finally stopped at Rs-27.50. So I stopped using that number and got a new number after returning to Chennai. Every one of us has come across issues like these but they will not be having enough time to run behind these issues and we very well know that it will take a very long time to get justice.

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