Hi,
I wanted to bring to your notice a point of view of a utterly dissatisfied, disgruntled customer of yours who used to be a loyal customer for the past 10 years. I have been a loyal customer of Airtel for the past 10 years. You can check my credit history during the tenure and not a single bill has been defaulted. In fact, I have been paying my bills before the due dates. I have been loyal to Airtel which can gauged by the fact that all my family has a mobile connection from Airtel, I have a landline connection, broadband connection & DTH services from Airtel.
Problem story: I got a new mobile number from Airtel (09560012541) in the month of May under a corporate plan for HCL. I had planned to give this connection to my dad as he required it. The number had not been used due to some reasons. Today morning I called up customer care, since when I called the above mentioned number it was being mentioned as number does not exist. The response that I got was that the number has been disconnected since the month of July which came a big shock for me.
When I asked that why was I not informed about the disconnection beforehand, the response was really funny and ridiculous: “Sir, we informed you by SMS on the same number (09560021541) 3 days beforehand”. Now can someone put some commonsense in these guys to tell them that if a number is not being used for a certain time, then why are you sending notifications on the same number. Why do you guys take an alternative number and an email id along with the billing address? I was asked to visit an Airtel showroom to get the issue addressed. I asked for address near sector-18 Noida. I was given the address as “G-26 Savitri Market, sec-18 Noida”. When I reached the address, I was shocked to know that the airtel showroom has been shut down since the past 3 months. I was appalled that the customer care executives did not even care of the whole situation a customer of theirs is.
Important points from a dissatisfied customer:
1. The Airtel customer care has gone from being the best to bad to the worst now. Every time a customer calls for the same issue, he/she would get different responses. No one and I mean no one including the floor supervisors know how to talk in either Hindi/English. They keep the customer on dead air for endless times.
2. Airtel has stopped keeping its promises, I was told that I would be getting a call back from the backend team (I thought Airtel was one team) within maximum 2 hours, but I did not get it.
3. Airtel needs to re-check its SLA’s: How can you say that if a customer defaults the bill for a single day, we will charge extra amount and at the same time you take 72 hours to re-activate a connection which should not take more than 24 hours.
4. Airtel needs to make sure the processes laid down are followed to avoid customer dissatisfaction: Is there a process of getting in touch of the customer on an alternative contact number (which is taken while submitting the documents)? If yes, then it is currently not being followed.
5. Airtel needs to make sure its records (if not for the customer records, at least Airtel’s own records) should be updated. Airtel customer care does not itself know that their showroom has been shut down for the past 3-4 months.
Expectations: I have a very simple expectation from Airtel. Please let me know what do I need to do now regarding the mobile number (09560012541)? If I do not get it re-activated, is there any expectation that Airtel has from me with regards to bill submissions, etc
Conclusion: At the end of all this conversations, where I spent almost half of my day fighting and debating with Airtel customer care trying to explain them that it is a mistake from their side and not mine (which their floor supervisors (Vijay Singh & Arun Kumar) agreed to), I had thought of putting a complaint against Airtel on the consumer forums court (which I eventually will). Also, in due course of time with the help of mobile number portability I would change my number from Airtel to any other Telecom company. I would also change my broad band connection and remove Airtel DTH services in due course of time.
In short, Airtel is going to loose a loyal customer very shortly.
0 comments