?Wherever you are one network doesn?t let you down????? ? This is the popular slogan of the Bharti Tele-Ventures AIRTEL.
Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited was incorporated on July 7, 1995 for promoting investments in telecommunications services. Its subsidiaries operate telecom services across India. As widely advertised by the Company, Bharti Tele-Ventures is India’s leading private sector provider of telecommunications services based on a strong customer base consisting of 7.42 million total customers which constitute, 6.76 million mobile and 657, 000 fixed line customers, as of April 30, 2004.
Although their first mobile services were launched only in Delhi, it would not an exaggeration if it is said that AirTel is the best mobile service across the country with best connectivity.
?Building Telecom... Building Relationships ? though this is the way they publicize, of late, it is being extensively found that there are lot of intolerable & excruciating blunders on the part of the Service Providers, the famous ?AirTel? being complained about by their customers.
My AirTel Plan:
I personally have an AirTel mobile connection and being impressed by the ?Sachin Invitation Plan 150? postpaid plan, I opted for this plan. As per this plan, the monthly base plan charges would be just Rs.150/- (of course + taxes) and further billing would be according to our outgoing calls and the SMS.
Personal Experience with the Service Providers:
During the past 6 to 7 months of having this AirTel connection, my sufferings could not be just confined into a few words. On the first month of obtaining this connection, I was constantly being sent repeated SMS messages informing me about the billed amount (it is just a very petty amount of Rs. 14/-), for which there were almost 20 reminders for me to make the payment. Every time I would open and read the SMS thinking that it was going to be from one of my friends or colleagues, but in vain.
As I thought it appropriate to put an end to this repeated nuisance, I called up the customer care 121 and informed them not to send me the aforesaid repetitive reminders. I was informed by the customer care executive that it is their general procedure to do so and if I require any specific requests to be carried out, I had to write to AirTel about my request. Even after sending them 2 letters, I found them sending me same kind of SMS messages and until date there has not come an end to it.
Special Offers :
These Special Offers are the next nuisance to me. I opted for the Sachin Invitation Plan only to have a cost control because I?m already provided with another mobile connection by my office & so again I didn?t want to personally incur extra expenditure. Whenever AirTel introduces any new offers / schemes, immediately again I would start receiving SMS briefing me about the same.
The best part of it was, AirTel introduced some Rs. 200/- base cost new plan, by which I would get 100 SMS free every month and so once I got an information from AirTel that I was automatically shifted to that Plan from my existing plan even without my consent which was very nauseating. The most shocking thing was I was charged an extra amount of Rs. 200/- with my next bill, being the new plan charges. Even after my several calls to AirTel customer care that amount was not waived and it was shown outstanding in all my subsequent bills. After more than 6 months of struggle, now AirTel has sent me a letter stating that they would reimburse me the above extra amount shortly.
Also, there have been instances (almost thrice as far as I remember) I had been billed too much extra for many SMS messages to the numbers which I had never sent. When enquired, I was informed that it was because of my accessing their internet connectivity via my cell phone and that it would be charged only under the SMS category. But obviously I didnt’ know about it earlier.
Although, I do accept that AirTel has an excellent coverage all over the Chennai city and even the most remote areas in the city receive the best signal, the abovementioned issues are highly annoying and develops a dissatisfaction among the customers in spite of their good service.
But being a user of the services of AirTel, I would certainly recommend their services to my MS friends, due to their widespread Towers and appreciably strong signals. If AirTel could satisfy its customers trying to bring the aforementioned nuisances under control and the billing inaccuracies and blunders, then I 100% guarantee that there could be no better service provider than AirTel in India.
Hope this revu had been of little help to my dearest MS friends. As usual, my request to u all would be to provide me with your valuable comments and ratings, which are a very great encouragement to me.
See you all soon with another interesting topic?????cheers !!!!!!!!!
Mrs. Jayalakshmi Shyam