[silk] My Airtel Saga
Might be a bit of a rant, possibly cause it seems to be our plight at the moment. Here's my sad story for those who can empathize. Got an airtel broadband line here for the office here at The Startup Centre - 8mbps, with a limit of 50GB. Its a 2999 rs. package. I go through the fine print and realize that there is a fair use policy in place, after the 50GB, actually way before the usage itself they tell you that you are nearing your quota and will be going back ten years in time unless you click on the magic button called Speed of Demand. We figured we will deal with it. First three months were awesome. A steady bill of 3K and some taxes and all was good. September, I get a bill for 35K. Some pretty weird math they have. There are multiple sessions logged for a day, a sample of which would be: 17 Sept 2011, Downloaded 25GB, Session time: 23 hours 17 Sept 2011, Downloaded 6GB, Session time: 8 hours And that went on for pages. Apparently in Airtel's special zone, hours in a day extend beyond 24 hours. Spoke to the customer care, we laughed about it and he said it was some billing upgrade that is causing havoc and it will get fixed. Next month, i get a bill, with the outstanding, 35K, and another 38K for the next month. Same story. Raised a complaint again. No resolution. This month i get one for another 35K. I officially own Airtel over a lakh for what was anticipated to be a 10K business expense. Ive exhausted all my resources. Their twitter id is handled by some gorilla, i am assuming. Their only response was that they sensed i didnt have a good customer experience. Called the Akosha guys to handle the situation, they dug up some high profile contacts, got someone from airtel to call, but two days later the verdict is that the billing system has logged usage Sir. I dont know how to break it to them that if we had exhausted our 50GB limit, and dropped to the 256kbps plan that they call an excuse for broadband, how it is even possible to download 70GB of data in 5 days, but logic is out of the window at this point. I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? Call me a coward, but at this point, i can empathize with the NRI who returned back to the US. It shouldnt be this bloody hard to get a service out of a corporate, when you are paying for it. Vijay - http://www.thestartupcentre.com
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Vijay Anand vi...@vijayanand.name wrote: Ive exhausted all my resources. Their twitter id is handled by some gorilla, i am assuming. Their only response was that they sensed i didnt have a good customer experience. Called the Akosha guys to handle the situation, they dug up some high profile contacts, got someone from airtel to call, but two days later the verdict is that the billing system has logged usage Sir. I dont know how to break it to them that if we had exhausted our 50GB limit, and dropped to the 256kbps plan that they call an excuse for broadband, how it is even possible to download 70GB of data in 5 days, but logic is out of the window at this point. I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? Is this after you've had a chat with their Nodal officers/offices ? Most ISPs have, at one time or the other, done this, Airtel reasonably more in recent times. The folks at the Nodal offices are generally patient enough to give a hearing and provide a resolution. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On Monday 24 October 2011 06:32 PM, Vijay Anand wrote: I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? Get BSNL. Call me a coward, but at this point, i can empathize with the NRI who returned back to the US. It shouldnt be this bloody hard to get a service out of a corporate, when you are paying for it. Comcast is worse. You'll have a collection agent at your door. :) Plus penalty at some insane percentage. -Venkat
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? If you're OK with it, can I have someone from Airtel call you back on this? If you can share an account number / phone number on email that would help. Cheers Mahesh
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On 24-Oct-2011, at 6:44 PM, Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.com wrote: I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? If you're OK with it, can I have someone from Airtel call you back on this? If you can share an account number / phone number on email that would help. Mahesh, absolutely. I am at 9894101373. The Account/Phone number being 044 42148697. Cheers Mahesh
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On 24-Oct-2011, at 6:41 PM, Venkat Mangudi s...@venkatmangudi.com wrote: On Monday 24 October 2011 06:32 PM, Vijay Anand wrote: I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? Get BSNL. Call me a coward, but at this point, i can empathize with the NRI who returned back to the US. It shouldnt be this bloody hard to get a service out of a corporate, when you are paying for it. Comcast is worse. You'll have a collection agent at your door. :) Plus penalty at some insane percentage. -Venkat You are possibly right. But ive dealt with customer care there, and dealing with customer care here, and its like talking to a talking wall. I would go with BSNL, except that i dread the day when the connection would go down for some reason :) will definitely gove it some serious thought at this point. Thanks.
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On 24-Oct-2011, at 6:37 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Vijay Anand vi...@vijayanand.name wrote: Ive exhausted all my resources. Their twitter id is handled by some gorilla, i am assuming. Their only response was that they sensed i didnt have a good customer experience. Called the Akosha guys to handle the situation, they dug up some high profile contacts, got someone from airtel to call, but two days later the verdict is that the billing system has logged usage Sir. I dont know how to break it to them that if we had exhausted our 50GB limit, and dropped to the 256kbps plan that they call an excuse for broadband, how it is even possible to download 70GB of data in 5 days, but logic is out of the window at this point. I am at my final point, before i talk to lawyers to file a case in consumer court. Silk listers, what would you suggest? Is this after you've had a chat with their Nodal officers/offices ? Most ISPs have, at one time or the other, done this, Airtel reasonably more in recent times. The folks at the Nodal offices are generally patient enough to give a hearing and provide a resolution. I did try reaching out to the nodal officer (have also mailed AND faxed a letter to them, no response yet on that). When i did get him on phone, He cut me off and gave me a number to call and that led to 198, into the land of the IVR maze which is far complicated than pan's labrynth to tread through. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.comwrote: If you're OK with it, can I have someone from Airtel call you back on this? If you can share an account number / phone number on email that would help. If you can pull strings in Airtel, Mahesh, I'd like to talk to a real Airtel employee too. They've screwed me over internet connections at events twice. The second time we applied a month in advance and paid up, and they still failed to deliver on time. We spent the last week frantically chasing them. The linemen finally turned up in the late afternoon of a full-day event and gave us a connection for three hours. Now Airtel insists the connection was delivered, so it's not their problem anymore. I have no idea what the status of the connection is (I asked for it to be cancelled the same day) and I can't find a human in Airtel who's willing to listen for more than two minutes. I went with Airtel because they had existing connections in the building. I assumed it would be a simple line extension for them, vs laying cables half a km from the main road for other ISPs. Kiran
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda j...@pobox.com wrote: On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.comwrote: If you're OK with it, can I have someone from Airtel call you back on this? If you can share an account number / phone number on email that would help. If you can pull strings in Airtel, Mahesh, I'd like to talk to a real Airtel employee too. Will try, Kiran. Can you email me a contact number and some account identifier that I can pass on to them? Regards, (BTW, it's not like I have a fairy godmother at Airtel - one firm I'm associated with, Pinstorm, front-ends their online reputation management and social media marketing. So they have a pretty deep funnel into their customer service folks. 's all :-) )
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
By saying so on a publicly archived list you became the first point of contact for every random guy posting ill-spelt rants about them on mouthshut -- srs (blackberry) -Original Message- From: Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.com Sender: silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus@lists.hserus.net Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:13:17 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda j...@pobox.com wrote: On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.comwrote: If you're OK with it, can I have someone from Airtel call you back on this? If you can share an account number / phone number on email that would help. If you can pull strings in Airtel, Mahesh, I'd like to talk to a real Airtel employee too. Will try, Kiran. Can you email me a contact number and some account identifier that I can pass on to them? Regards, (BTW, it's not like I have a fairy godmother at Airtel - one firm I'm associated with, Pinstorm, front-ends their online reputation management and social media marketing. So they have a pretty deep funnel into their customer service folks. 's all :-) )
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On 24 October 2011 18:32, Vijay Anand vi...@vijayanand.name wrote: Their twitter id is handled by some gorilla, i am assuming. Their only response was that they sensed i didnt have a good customer experience. On 24 October 2011 23:13, Mahesh Murthy mahesh.mur...@gmail.com wrote: (BTW, it's not like I have a fairy godmother at Airtel - one firm I'm associated with, Pinstorm, front-ends their online reputation management and social media marketing. So they have a pretty deep funnel into their customer service folks. So Vijay, the gorilla who sensed your plight works at Pinstorm. Mahesh, you might get them to do something about that standard sense feedback that @airtel_presence sends out. It's annoying. Ram -- Ramakrishnan Sundaram | r.sunda...@gmail.com | +91 860 501 5851 --
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
So Vijay, the gorilla who sensed your plight works at Pinstorm. Nope, not really. Their customer service ID: @airtel_presence is handled completely internally by them. Pinstorm handles the outbound ID: @Airtel_in, and also runs the scans, stats, analytics, sentiment metrics, insights and all the other higher order stuff. Pinstorm doesn't do the customer service bit, but tags and hands off such cases to them as and when it finds them.
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 11:22 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.netwrote: ** By saying so on a publicly archived list you became the first point of contact for every random guy posting ill-spelt rants about them on mouthshut It's a job, someone has to do it :-)
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
Call me a coward, but at this point, i can empathize with the NRI who returned back to the US. It shouldnt be this bloody hard to get a service out of a corporate, when you are paying for it. Vijay - http://www.thestartupcentre.com Is it a myth that even in the USA, calling customer care will get you some poppet in Gurgaon? I have Vodafone for 3G and Tata for the internet. And they always respond. Not that they always deliver on the issue within 24 hrs, but they talk, they try. (But Vodafone's streaming TV on the phone connection is rubbish) -- J. Alfred Prufrock Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman - But who is that on the other side of you?
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
I just bought myself a samsung 8.9 tablet,after much handwringing over the right tablet ..I need to insert a 3G Sim card..Please recommend the right one/plan etc.. I don't want to end up with a horror story of excessive billing. Mostly my use is for email/ facebook and watching Youtube videos etc. I have not monitored my usage earlier..Pls help.I currently have an Airtel 3G connection on my iphone which is rather spotty.. Naresh
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
Either vodafone or airtel - both are just fine -- srs (blackberry) -Original Message- From: naresh v xxx...@yahoo.com Sender: silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus@lists.hserus.net Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:29:07 To: silklist@lists.hserus.netsilklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga I just bought myself a samsung 8.9 tablet,after much handwringing over the right tablet ..I need to insert a 3G Sim card..Please recommend the right one/plan etc.. I don't want to end up with a horror story of excessive billing. Mostly my use is for email/ facebook and watching Youtube videos etc. I have not monitored my usage earlier..Pls help.I currently have an Airtel 3G connection on my iphone which is rather spotty.. Naresh
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On 25-Oct-2011, at 9:59 AM, naresh v wrote: I just bought myself a samsung 8.9 tablet,after much handwringing over the right tablet ..I need to insert a 3G Sim card..Please recommend the right one/plan etc.. I don't want to end up with a horror story of excessive billing. Mostly my use is for email/ facebook and watching Youtube videos etc. I have not monitored my usage earlier..Pls help.I currently have an Airtel 3G connection on my iphone which is rather spotty.. I have a BSNL postpaid SIM in my Galaxy Tab 10.1. It works decently except: 1. The 3G connection flakes out once in a while and restarting wireless won't fix it. Even going into Flight mode won't fix it. I have to reboot. 2. BSNL appears to send bills only once every two months. There are no due dates on the bills. Kiran
Re: [silk] My Airtel Saga
On Tuesday 25 October 2011 09:59 AM, naresh v wrote: I just bought myself a samsung 8.9 tablet,after much handwringing over the right tablet ..I need to insert a 3G Sim card..Please recommend the right one/plan etc.. I don't want to end up with a horror story of excessive billing. Mostly my use is for email/ facebook and watching Youtube videos etc. I have not monitored my usage earlier..Pls help.I currently have an Airtel 3G connection on my iphone which is rather spotty.. Naresh* * BSNL 3G plans... I have unlimited at 725/mo. Rarely do I get a bill for over 900...
