Airtel Scams, Stop Now, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao
Airtel scams, Airtel missed calls, Airtel Ads, SIM card activation, Airtel roaming services, Airtel Fraud
Airtel is one of the leading service providers in India. Because of the intense competition, Airtel (may be other service providers also) has (have) resorted to cheap and unethical ways to generate revenue streams. If you have encountered any of these in the past, please share in this forum, so that awareness can be created and get such unethical actions punished. The I have seen are -
a) Calls from switched off numbers: 8105204433, 40668980000. The call center agents call you at the afternoon time. The moment you pick up the call, the currency is deducted from the account.
b) Calls using other service providers numbers: 9008020617, 959180248, 8970123629. The call agents call you up at midnight or sometimes at 1:00 am. These numbers are registered with Spice and Aircell in Karnataka region.
c) Roaming service: They call you with some random mobile numbers, the moment you pick up the call, the roaming chargers are applied and you end up losing Rs. 105/- per minute at the present incoming rate. Ten such calls from the service providers and you lose Rs. 1000/- which is equivalent to losing 666 minutes of talk time in India in 10 x 10 seconds of wrong calls.
d) Airtel Ads: Even if you have unsubscribed them, they still send you this. One mistake of clicking something on the SMS, and you have the services activated. I have seen my relative lose Rs. 40/- in 4 mins of accidentally activating this service.
e) SIM card activation: This is the big boss of all. They sell SIM cards on street side, ask for proof of ID and address, get the forms filled, and top up the SIM card at the instant you buy. It works for a few days. One of the days they call you (without prior notice) to get a verbal confirmation of the address proof. If you miss the call, they deactivate the SIM card immediately. Can someone from their side explain, why only one call and that too without prior appointment? Why do they believe the verbal confirmation is essential, though all the information has been verified by their street side agent? Why not refund all of the money back if they disabled the SIM?
Getting your grievance redressed through Airtel is a nightmare. If you want do not believe, you can search for "Airtel Complaints", "Airtel Grievance", etc. and the first page that you will come across in Google will be of a consumer court. This is because Airtel either does not want to redress the customers' grievances or they have not setup a mechanism such that customer can quickly get their issues resolved (remember issue resolved means lower revenues for Airtel ;) ).
In one occassion, I have been able to get some refund for an issue through the Nodal Officer. The Nodal officers are of some help in case you are able to reach them.Their address is http://www.airtel.com/applications/xm/MobileNodalOfficer.jsp
I am also copying their contact addresses below, in case they remove this from the web-space for their own benefit. You can also complain at http://www.icomplaints.in/, but I am not sure how effective they are.
Getting your grievance redressed through Airtel is a nightmare. If you want do not believe, you can search for "Airtel Complaints", "Airtel Grievance", etc. and the first page that you will come across in Google will be of a consumer court. This is because Airtel either does not want to redress the customers' grievances or they have not setup a mechanism such that customer can quickly get their issues resolved (remember issue resolved means lower revenues for Airtel ;) ).
In one occassion, I have been able to get some refund for an issue through the Nodal Officer. The Nodal officers are of some help in case you are able to reach them.Their address is http://www.airtel.com/applications/xm/MobileNodalOfficer.jsp
I am also copying their contact addresses below, in case they remove this from the web-space for their own benefit. You can also complain at http://www.icomplaints.in/, but I am not sure how effective they are.
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