I have bought this product last year on July and all the problems started as free offers.
I have been informed that 6 months free pack and I need to recharge for 100rs to start using it. The dealer from whom I purchased this has informed me that he has done all the recharge but it never showed up in the account section nor when I called up the customer care number. It took 2 days to resolve, finally the dealer was right and airtel was wrong.
Next, I chose one free regional pack and they started to deduct money for that. Again customer care and a week time to get the deduction stopped. Also the channels dont show up as soon as you add them in your existing pack. It takes 3 or 4 hours where in tatasky it is immediate. I am not sure about other DTH but my friend told that Dish also does it ASAP.
Then problems started free flowing within couple of weeks, you need not look out to see whether it rains your DTH does that job. The service not available problem will come as soon as it rains and will make your TV watching a pain. Other DTH also gets disturbed but not to the extent for Airtel.
Then my setup box got into problems, it will never get switch on. This time I understood the painful customer care and was almost got into the acts of dragging airtel to consumer court. I have called customer care of different products and I have never seen such a worst service. I would like to mention few examples.
Calling customer care and speaking with a executive is like climbing Mt. Everest and if u r lucky enough you will be able to hold the executive till they open a complaint no. Most of the times, I have to call 3 or 4 times(unlucky) and they give complaint no and will say they cannot take our appointments for service engineers to come. They will say once the service engineer opens the complaint, please call us so that we can fix appointment. How do we know when they see it?? simple answer call after 2 or 3 hours.
I have done and got so many complaint nos. so far only twice service engineer had come. First time one engineer came, the problem was not occurring at that time and he left. After some hours when the problem occurred, he told he cannot take it and call customer care. After that I got several nos but no one visited, the complaints were getting closed. When I objected closing complaints they told it is auto process and will get closed in3-4 days. Then a service engineer came and told this is a common complaint in the setup box and told me a shorcut to reset the box to get it switch on. He told, he will replace the setup box once he got stock of new ones. After that, I tried calling him so many times and there was no proper response.
I also get messages stating are you satisfied with the service provided?Ireply NO. Then I get sms stating thanks for your feedback our guys will get back to help. But never any people from Airtel called. I have also sent mails to the customer care and it just looked they dont read. They just respond they will contact but will never ever contact. If you choose English then you will forget your English.. Just see the 86 reviews so far with almost NO as recommendation. Clear justification from people, Worst product. I stopped using it in 3 months time and passed information to most of my friends to stay away from this product. All are happy as they dont use this Airtel DTH and me too asI stopped using this.
FYI: In my native, we are using Tata Sky and as all say it is the costliest one but a good product.
Final Verdict: Enjoy the ad for Airtel DTH and dont get into releationship with this product
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After seeing a huge increase of frustrated customer, I think its time to plan something like "Pink Chaddi Campaign"
All the frustrated customers can choose a day and send their setup box to airtel head office stating we dont want this product. Atleast after receiving hundreds or thousands of setup boxes Airtel will put a full stop to its bad service as it will also make a huge impact on their sales. What say guys?