i had been in touch with customer care,Airtel since past two months.the matter being,they had activated the hello tune on my number without my consent.To put it in simple terms,there was some technical fault in their system which had led to this activation.i have been calling since then and have spoken to 4 or 5 of their customer care executives explaining my problem to them.initially they ensured me that they were sorry for the incovenience and that all the money will be refunded back as it was their fault and some 5000 odd accounts had been activated due to their technology fault.i was given assurance every time i called that within 48 hrs the money will be refunded.time passed by,no money was transferred and when finally disgusted with their bad customer service i called and spoke to supervisor of my problem,he checked the records he had recieved from the back office team,where my number was not their.he told me that he cannot do anything for me because my number has not been activated according to the back office team. i am highly frustrated now.i really dont know whose fault is this.the front office or the back office team.someone is wrong somewhere. where should i complaint
Most of the Vendors of telecom services adopt the "Gather first and then screw policy". They first market their product for lowest prices, and once customers are used to their services and they find that its difficult to move to other services, they start raising prices. even if the prices are not raised, network congestion is an obvious issue. I saw a live example in chennai. One of my friend had a Hucth GSM connection as it was the cheapest when he bought it(GPRS - 99 pm, 9-9 calls at 10 paise pm etc.). But due to this fall of rates, most of the people started moving to Hutch leaving Airtel and Aircel. Consequently network congestion came in. My friend lost 2-3 business deals just because the call was cut in mid or the voice was not clear when he was talking to his customers, which caused him a drop off of around 2 lacs. He then wanted to switch to Airtel which provided congestion free services but with some more cost(which was now fine for him). But as portability is not possible in India and he had already circulated his number all over, he couldn't do that. He ended up banging his head on the walls and finally switched to Airtel which was again going to earn him a great loss..
It is very imperative that the scheme is launched immediately. Any one wanting to change over wont mind to pay even rs. 500/- -1000/- higher, as he/she is already desperate and in anguish over the daily grind he has to go thru. I for one am 100% willing to fork out addl charges suffering the poor service of Airtel.
the telcos are holding us hostage and this is a true monopolistic attitude.. this is against the very basic rules of free trade and consumer rights and i am not surprised to know that the cell phone operators have rejected the idea of 'number portability'. i do agree that in even in a country like US, number portability has come just a few years back, but you would be interested to know, how all of it started. it started my a small PIL from one of consumer, claiming that this attitude of the phone opertaor was monopolistic and was not giving the consumer an equal chance to decide whats best for him. and that was it.. this case reached the highest order and became a law and the US regulators had to implemement it.
yes the telcos are keeping customers as hostage in absence of number prtability. the quality of service is poor and the absence of portability is in the root of this. TrAI findings that practically no service provider provides desired level of service. i have very poor experience of customer care service of Airtel. only way you can contact them is call center. the replies are stereo typed. you will never be able to talk to any one higher up. i have been facing problems in outgoing calls whenever i and my familiy members(who also have airtel numbers0 are on roaming. every time Rs 49 is promptly deducted but the outgoing calls dont mature. no solution. even the customer care number is not approachable from that center. recently i returned from out of circle and complained that my mother who is in another circle is not being able to make calls, they did something and told now it is okay. and thus there is no complaint. i simply could not get number of any supervisor on the pretext that if she told that she would lose her job. this would not be possible if there was an apprehension that the customer would shift to other telco.
The argument that India has the lowest mobile fares in the world is farce and not true. Even in the small and poor african countries, people had fought and got facilities like ,
1. Per second billing.
2. Full talk time on every recharge.
3. Accumulation of validity days for every recharge. For ex, if you get 30 days validity on a recharge and if you recharge again the next day , you now get a validity of sixty days not as 30 days only as in India.
Considering these facilities got by those african countries like Mauritius and Nigeria , one will feel that Indian companies are only cheating and looting people with their service,network and rigid policies. One more thing to be brought to the notice is that the call costs are just a shade higher than in India.
I think there should be an active cellular phone subscribers association which can bring the TRAI and Cellular companies to the court on these irregularties.
It is useless to ask for MNP when TRAI can't even enforce the quality of service requirement on service providers. I am BPL Maharashtra subscriber and I have accumlated Rs.1500 talk time as BPL network is unable to connect on demand. I can dial only in off hours. I would like to have my talk time refunded and I would forget about subscription charge and find other provider. But BPL won't refund the talktime even though it can't provide satisfactory service. I think TRAI should enforce the 99% call completion rate and otherwise suspend the licences of operators and make them refund the talk time. I would be happy even if there is no number portability!!!
I don't know where the competition is in the mobile space in India today. If any, the competition is between one bad service provider and another. All rates are comparable. The customer is the loser. MNP should be introduced with immediate effect.
