I have an Airtel postpaid connection which is really giving me comparatively better service that the other providers whom I have tried before, like Reliance (Twice) and Hutch.
I did have some problems setting up GPRS on my Nokia 6020 and it seems like only a few people in the helpdesk knew about advanced AT settings for the phone dial up connection. I finally figured out the easiest way to configure my phone... bypass Airtel, go to the Nokia site and order settings. Since I also do settings for my clients with Airtel connections, I’ve really been frustrated wating for settings which ’’will be sent in five minutes’’ and has me waiting till 11 pm at their residence and then another full day which is not very economical for my business.
Another frustrating thing about Airtel is following up on the customer care executives. Everytime I activate/de-activate national roaming I have to follow up to ensure that it is really done. If I had not done that I would have ended up paying roaming rental for that month too, or ended up going out of state and finding my roaming not active. The same for plan changes.
The worst nightmare was receving promotional text messages. I went to their site, filled up and submitted a form and afterwards called up customer care more that 10 times, each time being assured that I had been unsubscribed, but finally it is done.
I like Airtel probably because in the Land of the blind the one eyed man is king, or probably because I feel that they they are genuinely making an effort to give better customer service and network services, GPRS is cheap, call charges are decent..
All said and done, they have established a good relationship with me. I am currently awaiting Airtel to wire up my locality because I dont want to use any other broadband/Land line service provider beacause I trust Airtel to give me value for money and quality service. I now make calls at Re.1 / minute as all my relatives are back home with airtel phones... I also make it a point that if someone has 2 phones, I always call the Airtel number so that Airtel can make a profit off me :) If they keep up their good work, they’ve got a lifetime customer. In my business I need to be in touch with my clients all the time, my reliability for my customers in part is a reflection of the reliability of the services provided to me by my service providers as I am dependent on them. It’s not just me, my clients/friends are on data cards, GPRS, voice on Airtel and all are happy with me for recommending a good product to them.
Yeah Airtel Ad’s suck, I wonder where they make them. The reason I didnt take Airtel in the first place was because I felt their AD’s were targetting illiterate people, so I was a bit worried about their quality of service.