I had been using Idea prepaid for approx. a couple of years. The only reason I stuck on so long was because I did not want to change my contact number. However my experiences with Idea in the last few months has been frustrating, forcing me to switch to Airtel. First, I had a plan by which I could make local idea-idea calls @ 0.75p and calls to all others @ Re 1.00. Well, this was apparently too good to last.
One fine day, Idea sent me a message saying that my "call rates have been reduced at no further charge to me". What they had actually done was increase my calling rates to Re. 1.00 and Re 1.50 respt. Well, this didn’t go down too well with me & their so called customer care ’executives’ didn’t help matters by saying that there was nothing they could do and I would have to live with the new rates as they were standard, blah, blah...
Next, Idea suddenly put a plan on my account making SMSes @ 10p (the Promo plan) and cut Rs 40 from my account. Hang on - I had never activated this service!!! I had to call their helpline number up atleast 50 times to get their cust. care people on the line - each time I called up, a recording repeated the same message to me - "There are no customer care executives free at this point". Well, are the customer care executives so busy 24x7 ? Perhaps they are busy dealing with hundreds of other irate customers like me, bearing testimony to their poor services. When I finally got in touch with one of their people, he had no clue what had happened, but said that he whould deactivate the service but that the Rs 40 could not be refunded. Also, he claimed that his computer was not working and could not help me further and find out why Idea had suddenly decided to bestow me with unwanted plans. I called up 5-6 times more, but to no luck, the custome care executives are highly incompetent, I must say! So I was at a Rs 40 loss.
Things didn’t end here, a day later, I received a message from Idea - "Thank you for activating Dialer tone!". Here we go again!!! I had never, ever, EVER activated this service either! And to top it off another 40 bucks was deducted from my account! This was the last straw - I phoned the helpline and after another 100 tries got them on the phone and demanded an explanation.
As expected, they had no explanation and claimed that their systems were non functional and that I should call back after a couple of days. At this point I was ready to remove the Idea SIM card from my phone and snap it in half! Well, as you might have guessed, I didnt get this amount refunded as well, and got rid of this pathetic, harrassing service provider from my life once and for all.
A word of advice, don’t go for Idea if you want to have peace of mind and do not want to be harrased regularly. Taking an Idea connection was perhaps one of the worst decision I could have made.
Hope this helps!!