I have been a customer of Airtel broadband and landline for more than 2 years. I changed my mobile number a few months months ago and gave Airtel customer care agents the new number whenever I called them. Yet they had not updated my current working numbers.
Recently I was unable to pay my bill and got reminders from Airtel. But after about a month, my airtel landline phone was also disconnected temporarily by Airtel due to non-payment.
However, Airtel did have my permanent address as well as my email address.
On the 23rd of December instead of contacting me, an agent from the collection agency representing Airtel made calls to one of my relatives. The relative informed me about it and I called the agent on the same number. The agent said, he had access to all the records of outgoing calls we make from 'my' Airtel landline phone. He had chosen three of the numbers we (my family) frequently make calls to from the Airtel landline and called up one of the numbers.
Airtel does not have rights to provide other parties with such information. Even Airtel does not have the rights to call the people we contact through our landline phone personally. The fact that the agent had used such records without any sort of permission shocked everyone around me.
The same evening I requested that my Airtel broadband and landline connection to be terminated. On the 24th of December a person from the Retention department of Airtel. I insisted that my landline and broadband connections may be terminated. He accepted it. He also tracked down the name of the collection agent I'd spoken with the previous day. Additionally he promised to escalate the issue & that necessary action would be taken within 48 hours regarding the agent's action and the insecurity of my records maintained by Airtel and that I would be informed about it.
But as on 27th december I have not received intimation if any action was taken. So I called the Airtel customer care and was informed that the person from the retention department had closed my request for cancellation stating that I had accepted to being retained as a customer, which I definitely did not.
Then my call was transferred to a manager who confirmed it and spoke only about the termination request but not the breach of integrity and privacy. Finally she took a complaint about the person from the retention dept. having untruthfully maligned my termination request. She went on to state that the issue was resolved from her end, which was also certainly wrong and misleading.
I am considering legal action against Airtel to ensure that more people do not have to suffer from anguish, agony, embarrassment, loss of credibility and other negative effects because of the irresponsible actions of the mentioned company.
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