I want to share latest experience I had with Airtel.

After finding that I continue to pay high rental for very less usage, I decided to change from postpaid to prepaid service.

To my surprise, I had to visit the dealer in person and I had to fill up the form once again. While submitting form, they could not check their system if I paid last bill so they asked me to pay the bill again or come after couple of days when their system is updated.

Having bad experiences in Year 2007 where I paid bills twice due to airtel’s mistake, I decided to return after 2 days. Finally, they took my application and said that my services will be activated within 48 hours.

It is already more than 72 hours and services remain deactivated.

I called call centre more than 10 times in last 6 hours. They gave me all kinds of advices by now, but the services remain deactivated. Just to give you glimpses:

1. Try calling prepaid service (121 or 9845098450) from other lines say landline or other operators line. It did not work since their system does not recognize non activated numbers.

2. I called up using postpaid number, but it does not work either because airtel postpaid and prepaid are two different teams.

3. I called up using another Airtel prepaid number and finally I got through their agent. They asked me to select language and wait for four hours. Of course, this did not work either.

4. Now Mr Lathesh asked me contact dealer since dealer hasn’t activated as per him.

To my surprise, their system allows me to recharge and it shows that I have balance of Rs 333. It is also sending me SMS for last three days. But I am unable to receive or make calls. I realized it only when I could not make call.

As such Airtel seems to be fraudulent company and I had had many bad experiences in the past. To numerate few:

They disconnected me 2 days in advance when moving from corporate connection to personal connection. In the end, they apologized for their mistake only when I shouted at them.They sent me bills after disconnecting services and forced me to pay without actually giving me itemized bills showing when calls are made.They keep sending GPRS activations despite shouting at them many times that I don’t want such services. Needless to say, I ended up paying for GPRS due to my 2 year old son downloading clips by double clicking a button on Samsung device by mistake.They activate jokes by default to make money on prepaid services without asking you.

It is frustrating to find Airtel services so horrible when their leader talks great things and expect great things from Indian politicians! In my view, he should walk the talk first.

I can’t think of moving to others since I hear similar things about other operators too. I would advice people not to go for Airtel if you have a better choice.