Bharti Airtel
White collared bhai-giri by Airtel

I tried to fax this to their registered office in Delhi, but their fax number is unavailable!!

Hemanshu Narsana

RMZ Icon, S. No. 3/8,

Baner Road,

Pune - 411045

27th January

Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal

Chairman & Managing Director

Bharti Airtel

Qutab Ambience (at Qutab Minar), Mehrauli Road,

New Delhi – 110030

Dear Sir,

SUB: White collared extortion by Bharti Airtel for A/c. No. 112-101242939

I would like to bring to your notice, in order to seek a resolution, of extortion methods utilized by Bharti Airtel towards claiming a bill from me for Rs. 3501.95 for A/c. No. 112-101242939 (cell number 9860878660).

I would like to provide some history before getting into specifics:

1) I had requested for closure of the aforementioned account for cell number 9860878660 sometime in mid 2008 (July/August).

2) The Airtel Relationship Center where I applied for closure of account is:

Telephone Consultancy Services,

Kunal Apartments, Plot No. 5,

Sanghvi Nagar, Survey No. 148, 150, 151,

Aundh, Pune -411007 Pune

3) I do not have the exact dates for closure application because when I applied for closure, I was not given a copy of the form by the Airtel office where I applied.

4) When I requested for closure, I had enquired as to whether I would be charged the postpaid rental for the full billing cycle or only upto the day I put in the closure request. I was told I would be charged the postpaid rental only till the day the request was filed, and unused rental would be credited to me during the final settlement bill.

5) When the final settlement bill arrived, to my shock and dismay the full rental for that billing cycle had been charged!

6) I called the call center and told them to look into it, and they said they would. Nothing came of it, and I waited and waited.

7) I kept getting calls from Airtel executives to pay the bill, and I would painfully explain to them what the problem was and why it needed to be addressed before I pay the bill. They said they would look into it and call me back with a resolution.

8) They never called back with a resolution, and each week or so someone new would call and ask me to pay up. ALSO, the amounts on the bill kept going up.

9) A month or two later I realised that Airtel had not even closed my account, and it was showing as Active in their system and so I was being charged NEW rentals for each following billing cycle!!

10) By now I was so frustrated I just gave up on Airtel and their non-resolution of issues.

11) Recently, sometime in December I received a call from a lady who told me my bill was now around 4, 000.00 Rs and when I told her that I had closed my service in July/August itself she said No, your service is still active!

12) I told her to check her system to see if I had made any calls since then, and that I had applied for closure of the account in July/August itself!! She again said she would get back to me on this with a resolution.

13) No call has come since then till date! It has now been close to 6 months of unresolved billing issues!

14) So last I heard I owed Airtel 4, 000.00 Rs in unpaid billing, most of it erroneous!!

15) On 24th January I got an email from Bill. Printing@airtel.in threating me of initiating legal action against me and of intimating my HR to take action against me, if I don't pay the billed amount of 3501.95 Rs.

16) This makes me wonder how my bill, like the stock market price of Bharti, fluctuates each time I get a call. Till now it only went up, but now it has come down from 4, 000.00 to 3501.95 Rs??

Now that you have the history of my account and billing woes, I would like to ask you the following questions:

1) Even though I had asked for closure of my account, why was it not done within 7 days of filing the request as told to me by the staff at the Airtel Relationship Center?

2) Why was the unused postpaid rental not credited to my final settlement bill?

3) Why was I continuously billed so that the billed amount swelled up to Rs. 4000?

4) Why were my explanations not taken care of and the issue resolved even after many such explanation attempts?

5) How did the bill mysteriously slide from 4, 000.00 to 3, 501.95, both of which are amounts I don't really owe Airtel.

As for the legal action, I would like to let you know that before you do decide to take such action, maybe we should go to Consumer Court and settle the issues listed above.

I am also a shareholder of Bharti, but I am very disappointed with the service levels and shallow tactics employed, and I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by investing in this company.

I would request you to respond to my letter in the next 7 days, with a resolution that works amicably for the both of us.

I would gladly pay Airtel, but only if the final settlement is fair and reflects the true nature of the transactions in question.

Regards,

(Hemanshu Narsana)

Company: Bharti Airtel
Country: India

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