Adventures with a telecom operator
I have always been a strong advocate of Airtel being a mobile customer for almost 10 years now and a landline/broadband customer for the last 6 years. I remember the time when I shifted homes and Airtel transferred my line within 3 days with calls to follow up and checking for customer satisfaction.
I almost feel nostalgic for those were the times when a company was hungry to win more customers.
Cut to 2011.
How many times have we seen this before? A company becomes the largest market share holder and complacency sets in. IBM, HP, Unilever – the examples abound. I think now it will be time to add Bharti Airtel to that list of names very soon.
To set the context
First, my broadband connection:
The FUP(Free Usage Policy). Firstly I think it is unfair that a customer who has taken unlimited connection is still limited by data transfer. Secondly, it is even worse when you implement such a policy without intimating the customer(even if I give the benefit of doubt saying that the company has to optimize bandwidth in a torrent-happy country). But the worst of it all, every time I hit the FUP limit, there is a redirect to an Airtel webpage where I have to go manually click on a button for the internet to start working again. You all know how frustrating it is to face this when you are on a payment gateway page.
This is serious dis-respect to a consumer! Please dont insult us!
The Great Service Engineer Brigade – Now that I finally managed to convince the Airtel Customer Service that there is “actually” a problem in the service. After that the great service engineer brigade starts. I actually had 4 service engineers coming home to check on the same service request. It actually worked from DSL to Voice to Wiring and then back to DSL. Of course at the end of it, I am still not sure if things have been fixed permanently or not. The brilliant thing is that these engineers keep talking about their departments as if I care.
I dont care about your departments. Just fix the problem!
Now my mobile connection
International Roaming: Was supposed to activate International Roaming for my sister moving to the US. The phone was supposed to be her communication channel for informing us and to contact the person coming to pick her up at the airport. The Airtel Relationship Center which religiously collected the 5000/- deposit of course forgot to do what they were supposed to do. “Actually activate the roaming”. After some tense times for the family not hearing from her, we get to know Airtel had missed activating it.
Finally they did activate it but then it was not working over there. Oh.yes, after 10 days and a Service Request later, I still am awaiting the resolution of the request. And to top it all, the guy at the Banaswadi Relationship Center doesnt even have the decency to apologize for his mistake.
I have encountered bad service before. But I had respect for the Sunil Mittal company for being innovative and listening to the customers. It’s unfortunate how companies really go the complacency route.
I am giving it one more month for old times sake. If not, I guess I should just find a service provider who is still hungry for customers. I think Airtel is just betting on other service providers being more incompetent than them!