Hi.. it is with great great displeasure that I am writing this post FOR Airtel.
I want to inform them and educate them a bit about UNPROFESSIONALISM and in order to do so I am going to recount my experience with Airtel Customer Care here.
This is for the nth time that Airtel has activated some stupid and rubbish 'value added service' on my number, and might I add, without my knowledge or confirmation or permission to do so. When I came to know about it (which is after about a month of the services being activated on my number), I try to deactivate them... and the irony is I don't know how to unsubscribe to this bullshitting from Airtel. As earlier when I used to face this problem, I would request on *121*5# to get a list of all the VAS that Airtel without my knowledge would have them subscribed from my number. And I would get a message (a typical display message that won't be recorded in my inbox!) listing down the services active on my phone along with the process to unsubscribe to them. But now when I get this response, it reads like this:
"You have the following services active on your Airtel number:
1. so n so...
2. so n so...
*1 Return to the main menu"
So basically, there is no option for the customer to unsubscribe from such services anymore! And according to Airtel, this is absolutely professional behaviour, they think its completely ok to subscribe (without permission) any and every number to their unwanted 'value added services' (I dont know which dumb person came up with such term, because I can assure you Airtel, there is no value addition in spamming your own customers and also charging your customer to bear such spamming). And also according to Airtel, it is a very professional behaviour to not even give the customer the option to unsubscribe from such madness.
Now, not knowing what I can do myself, I call up the customer care. I am already a bit irritated, but if that is not enough now I have to navigate through their complex IVR (perfectly professional way to irritate the customer a BIT more, right?) After failing on the first attempt and the second attempt, when my call finally gets answered by the right customer care executive (I hope), she answers with 'bola manla tumhala namaskar me aapli kasha prakari madad karu shakto' and 'ho' and 'barobar' and 'maji kayi kaye tumcha problem aahe...' Really? Surely Airtel would know that not each and every customer calling their helpline is a maharashtrian! Well, I am not and so not understanding a single word of what was being said, I am totally and completely irritated by now... with the results: instead of discussing my initial problems of VAS on my number, I am now in a heated argument with the girl on the language she should be using to converse! And guess what she replies with? 'They have been instructed to speak in Marathi! ' So now, totally frustrated as I can not ask her to not obey the instructions from her bosses... I demand to know why the VAS have been activated on my number? The usual drama then unfolds, she asks me to be on hold so that she can check and revert... I am on hold for 5 minutes, she comes back and informs me that 'I have subscribed to the value added services currently active on my phone! ' And since it mentions that ways on her system, I am the liar if I say, I did not subscribe to any such nonsense. Unable to convince me, she transfers the call to her senior (the transfer takes 10 more minutes). And the senior confirms the same, I am LYING if I am saying that i have not subscribed to any value added services from Airtel! Since I have totally lost my cool by their continuous implication that I am the LIAR in this scene, I start shouting. And thats when they say, "Ma'm, please be professional! "
I want to ask you Airtel now, "whose UNPROFESSIONAL behaviour was it that started this? "
-A seriously disappointed customer!
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