In Airtel, ‘Har ek customer mamuli hota hai’- Airtel harasses its 5 year old customer
My brother has an Airtel postpaid connection for 5 years. Recently his Simcard was damaged. He called the call centre of Airtel. They told him to visit one of the Airtel offices in Bangalore with an address proof, ID proof and a photo. He did the same. Incidentally for the address proof he took a copy of his SBI passbook.
When he reached the Airtel office near Raheja Arcade, Koramangala, he was asked to fill-in another application form, which he did. The form was submitted, and the lady at the post-paid counter was processing the request. Suddenly she said that she required the latest transaction details of the bank account which my brother had given as address proof. My brother asked why it was required.
The lady simply threw the application form and said if he did not have it the request cannot be processed. My brother tried to reason, he was shown another person to speak to. This person repeated the same thing. My brother told him that it was incidental that he had brought the bank passbook photocopy as the address proof and this was never told to him by the Call Centre executive.
In a busy city like Bangalore, to go back without getting the Sim and to have to come again next evening is almost unthinkable. Besides, my brother told him that they had the bank account number, his pan card copy (as ID proof), and they could simply verify with the bank if they had any doubt. To this the Airtel executive replied, why they should verify.
(Then why the hell were they asking for transaction details). After some argument this executive led my brother to another person, who was supposedly the manager in that office. He was busy on phone and simply refused to listen. When my brother tried to reason with him, he said that he is busy on conference call. For a manager the conference call is more important than the customer? The manager was the rudest my brother had ever seen. My brother’s contention was very logical:
1.In first place, address proof and id proof are already verifiable documents. Then why should a mobile service provider ask for further documents.
2.If further documents were required, why wasn’t he told when he called the call center?
3.Why no one in the Airtel office would could listen properly to the customer and solve his problem?
In short Airtel office appeared like hostile camp. After lot of argument the manager softened and surprisingly he now gave the sim card to my brother. My brother was also asked to pay Rs. 25/- as duplicate sim charge, which he did. He asked my brother to submit transaction details of some other bank and send the same by email to him.
Once back home, my brother sent him an email with a copy of the transaction details of another bank to the manager of the Airtel office Mr. Ganapati.
Although his call service was activated, to his surprise he found that his sms service was barred. Next day he called the airtel customer care (really?) number 121 to enquire about the same. He called several times and he was told different reasons every time but his sms service was not restored. Some of the reasons that Airtel’s customer care told him were:
‘Sir, document verification is being done that is why your sms service is barred’ (This is not a new connection. It is a 5 year old connection for God’s sake! Why should verification require Airtel to bar the sms service?)
‘Sir, due to some technical reasons, the sms service is barred’. (What technical reasons?)
‘Sir, this is our process at Airtel, it will take 48 hours’ time’ (Is process more important or the customer? Process should be to help the customer not to harass a genuine loyal customer. And then what is the process, no one explains!)
‘Sir, migration of passwords is going on your sim card and hence it will take time to restore your sms service’. (This is false. Being a IT engineer, my brother knows that such migrations do not require any service to be held-up)
And finally when my brother would give valid counter arguments to each of their excuses, they could simply say – ‘Sir, I am from accounts, I cannot do anything’, or, ‘Sir, I am helpless, this is the process, I cannot do anything’.
If everyone at Airtel is so helpless, then who would help the customer?
Airtel does not seem to be ‘one-company’. It is broken into dysfunctional silos. Call Centre is one such silo, the Airtel offices in the city is another, the manager is another and perhaps the corporate office is another. In all this the customer is being taken for a ride.
It is more than 30 hours and my brother’s sms service has still not been restored. In Airtel, ‘Har ek customer mamuli hota hai’