I have been using Airtel postpaid SIM since last 2-3 years. I started facing network issues at my residence location since 28-29 Jan. On 1st Feb I called 198 to complain. I was told that there was some work going on and thus I was facing network problems. The call centre employee refused to register a complaint and didn’t give me a complaint number saying she was sending my complaint via email for fast track resolution. Network problem persisted On 5th Feb, I called 198 again. This time the call centre employee registered my complaint and I got a message with a complaint number (Reference number 60167126 registered at 08:41 on 5th Feb. Message mentioned that it would be closed within 2 days. Network problem persisted 2 days later, on 7th Feb, I called 198 again. Call centre employee Arti and her supervisor Mr Vaikumal told me the complaint was closed and provided all kinds of sham excuses like the network tower may have been moved by BMC, etc. They even refused to believe that I had called on 1st Feb because they couldn’t see this interaction in their system. My complaint had been closed without any resolution.

I asked them what steps had been taken to resolve my issue but they couldn’t tell me a single thing From the 1st to the 8th, I didn’t receive a single call/SMS/mail from Airtel asking about my problem or providing any solutions. For almost 10 days Airtel did nothing about my problem On one of my numerous calls to 198/121, the call centre employee suggested that I go in for a SIM exchange. On 11th Feb, I did a SIM exchange at Prabhadevi Airtel centre around 7 pm. Around 11 pm, my old SIM stopped working so I inserted the new SIM but the new SIM wasn’t working either. On calling 198, we found that the SIM number mentioned in the pack given to me doesn’t match the SIM number in the records that the call centre employee has. Essentially, my new SIM hadn’t been paired with with my MSISDN. For more than 12 hours, I was without a connection since neither the old nor the new SIM was working. After multiple calls to Airtel, I finally received another SIM which took another few hous to get activated After this I have been calling 198/121 multiple times daily and my daughter Natalie has been writing on the Airtel facebook page regularly. Very rarely have we received any calls from Airtel employees and those calls have just been a waste of time. Meanwhile, my network issues still persist Such apathy, on the part of India’s biggest telecom network service provider, is unbelievable. There is absolutely no concern for the customer’s inconvenience and lost time. Given the amount of inconvenience I have endured by not having network for 4-5 hours a day and the harassment endured in having to constantly call or contact Airtel on Facebook, I demanded a compensation of Rs 2000/- to be credited to 9920XX5972.

The amount I have asked for is the combined billing amount that my daughter and I generate in a month. I have mentioned the compensation to various Airtel employees including Ishaan and Vijay who have been mentioned in previous paragraphs. Some Airtel employees have not reverted and some employees have been shameless enough to offer Rs 250/-.
Airtel should not try to insult people by offering such a paltry sum when they have endured so much harassment.

Email Id: jyoti_magi@hotmail.