Airtel’s cheap attempt to steal money from customers
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a substandard service provided by an Indian bank; the bank basically did whatever it could do to delay my remittance so that it could hold my money for a period of time and utilize it to run its business. The service was a substandard, but I wouldn’t call it evil or criminal. However, unfortunately, I just experienced a terrible service provided by a different Indian company. To be perfectly fair, probably the vast majority of those who work for the company are good people; however, the service that the company provided to me was terrible. It can potentially be considered to be “criminal” because the company essentially attempted to steal my money. Now, I do not say that all Indian companies provide terrible services all the time; on the contrary, I find that they provide very good services in many instances. However, I have never experienced the kind of substandard service that I am about to describe here; it is an example of how terrible Indian companies’ services can be sometimes.
I use Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services to get my phone and internet connections. I received a bill about a month ago; it has the invoice date Jan. 27th and I paid for it on Feb. 3rd; however, Airtel simply disconnected the phone and the internet on Feb. 27th, 2007 claiming that I had not made the payment. It was clearly an Airtel’s mistake; Airtel just misplaced my payment, its record or both. I don’t know how it can happen, but it happened; I had to spend a lot of time and effort to get my services back. It was very unreasonable and I have to call it a “harassment”.
While I use services and I pay for these services, I get some help from my friend/my company’s director to use these services because using services can become tricky to foreigners (i.e., non-Indians); he is an Indian person and he can take care of various problems if they arise (and they did). So, from here on, I describe what happened as an event that “we”, he and I, experienced rather than just “I” alone experienced.
We received our statement for Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services a couple of days after Jan. 27th, 2007. We went to Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center at E-62. Vikas Marg, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi. We made the payment of Rs. 1,243 in cash. However, the collection center was unable to give us a receipt for the payment because the collection center was out of papers. Airtel is a major Telco in India, so I don’t know how something like than can happen, but it happened. A receptionist at the collection center informed us that she would take care of what needed to be taken care of so that the payment record would be made properly. She also wrote down a note on our statement for Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services, stamped and signed so that we would have a written record (Who knew that we would actually have to use it later?).
We assumed that the receptionist at Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center would take care of what needed to be taken care of; however, we found that the phone service was disconnected in the morning of Feb. 27th. We immediately contacted Airtel customer support, but they were unable to resolve the problem. Airtel eventually asked us to go to Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center to take care of the problem on our own because Airtel was unable to resolve it on its side. We already spent a lot of time speaking to Airtel customer support representatives at this point.
We stopped at Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center upon Airtel’s request. We only found out that the receptionist who received the payment or any other person at the collection center did not do what needed to be taken care of; Airtel did not have a proper record of our payment. We even spoke to the manager at the Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center, but they only posted the record of the payment which we made a month ago. We finally received a receipt for the payment also.
From here on, I describe what happened as an event that only “I” experienced. My friend/my company’s directory and I parted at this point because we had things to do and we assumed that the problem was over.
I assumed that this, stopping at Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center, demanding a receipt and what have you, finally took care of the problem, but there was yet another unpleasant surprise. I checked the phone and the internet connections after I came back from Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center to my office, and I only found that both the phone and the internet were still disconnected. At this point, I contacted Airtel customer support once again over the phone.
There was still more mismanagement of Airtel to be observed to my great unpleasant surprise. I spoke to a customer support representative and I explained the situation and demanded to connect the phone and the internet as soon as possible; I also requested to speak to his manager because this was an urgent matter and I needed to speak to a person who has more power and authority to get the problem resolved immediately. He told me that he’d transfer me to the manager, but he just hanged up. I could not simply wait until the problem gets resolved magically, so I called Airtel customer support again, speak to a representative and requested to speak to his manager. Amazingly, the second customer support representative also hanged up on me after he told me (or lied to me) that he would transfer me to his manager. I called Airtel customer support for the third time, and I was cursing this time; I demanded to get the phone and the internet connections back at least; this third customer representative told me that Airtel just connected my services back. I dislike cursing very much, but this actually made some difference in this particular instance.
I assumed that I had the phone connected and the internet connected at this point. Stunningly, I only got my phone connected; the internet was still disconnected. I contacted the internet customer support representative assigned to us to get the connection back.
The internet customer support representative assigned to us is actually a pretty reliable person, and he resolved many problems for me in the past; however, interestingly, he did not show up after two and a half hours. When I called him, he told me that he would come to my office in an hour, so I expected that I would need to wait for an hour, but I did not expect that I would need to wait for over two hours. I got the connection back eventually and I no longer needed his assistance, so I just called him and told him that he would no longer need to come to my office.
I want to emphasize that the vast majority of Indian people are good people and the vast majority of those working for Airtel are (probably) good people; however, what happened was just crazy. I used different phone services, cell phone services and internet services over the years; it is true that some (US) companies provided me substandard services. But no company pretended that it did not receive my money after I actually made a payment. Many Americans accuse Telcos and cable companies of stealing from customers; I don’t disagree with them. However, I know that they don’t steal money outright; Airtel did. Airtel essentially attempted to steal my money outright. It didn’t happen not because Airtel stopped doing evil but my friend/my company’s director and I fought hard.
Written by J. Watanabe
