Everyone knows that it’s a major trouble to disconnect a service from any provider in the Indian telecom industry. They will plead, offer discounts and try everything till you get pissed, leave it as is and stop paying the bills. And then they sue you for not paying the bills.
Since I was aware of the issues, I planned to disconnect my Airtel Broadband connection well in advance. I called them up and to my surprise they were really friendly. They offered to transfer the connection to any city or any individual in the same city. I said no and they explained the procedure to me – Give a disconnection request, go and submit the instruments to the nearest customer care office, pay the dues and your job is done. I did the same. They told me the present dues are already paid, my connection will be disconnected in 24 hours and they will send the remaining bill at the end of the month after which they will return any security deposit that was made. I came back happily appreciating Airtel! But of course I was mistaken.
Three weeks later, I got the bill from Airtel. The bill amounted to around 70% of my total fixed monthly bill amount but I had used it only for 8-9 days. I emailed Airtel about the same but got not replies. So I sent a message to @Airtel_Presence on Twitter because apparently this is a quick way to get their attention. And yes indeed, I got a reply within few hours which asked me to send an email to airtelpresence@airtel.in. I did the same. Soon, I got a reply saying they are looking into the issue and I was satisfied with it. The real problem I had was that the bill didn’t make any sense to me. They billed me for the whole month and gave some some random discount. Nowhere did they say that I used the service only for limited number of days. Nowhere did they say that the service was not in use after a certain date. I was ready to pay the amount once they confirmed that I won’t be getting any more bills!
Next day, I got a call from Airtel. They asked me the issue and I explained it to them. The guy replied saying that they have no disconnection request from my side. In fact my connection is up and running! I asked him to verify it and told him that I made a number of phone calls and physically submitted the instruments myself but they had absolutely no records of that. And then I realized that I wasn’t lucky or anything. It’s just that Airtel has a different MO when it comes to bugging their customers. It has been been 5 days since. I haven’t got any calls. @Airtel_Presence says they are working on the issue. I did pay this month’s bill to clear the dues from my side.
There is another thing worth noticing. I made 6 calls to the Airtel Bangalore Broadband CC since morning (for which Airtel has started charging extra nowadays). Each time I went through the complex IVRS options, reached a human being who asked my name and landline number and right at that time the phone call got disconnected. I’m not implying anything. Yet.
PS: I’m not saying that this the worst thing they or any telecom provider ever did. But what’s wrong is wrong.
Update
This month I got another bill from Airtel. This time they charged me for the whole month of Broadband usage. And the customer support hasn’t replied to any communication from my side.
12 responses to “Airtel Broadband disconnection woes”
You are right Mr. Chirag…the same thing happened to me….not in telecom but in Share Trading…It is painful experience.
I know how it feels to common people when they don't get proper answer and just waste the money in unnecessary way.
I hope your problem will be solved soon.
Ahh don't remind me about the Share Trading thing. Reliance assholes decided to scrap my plan and only options left are much more expensive 🙁
lolz….I guess…why don't you leave Software and get into Share Trading and PR 😉
It will be good..ha ha ha ha
Airtel is much better than Beam / Tikona. I hope Setu Sir would agree no more 🙂
I am still not sure why I am sticking with Airtel
1) My broadband official sucks, getting 10 kilo bits per second upload speeds
2) No service in my home (Zero!)
3) They harassed me to use their Airtel Digital TV even its their fault that they didn't put it in safe mode in the first place.
So that's broadband, mobile service and TV service – all pathetic service.
Is there a recent management change or what? Airtel was the perfect company a few years ago (a year back too?). What's with all this crap?
Did it get taken over by MBA's in suits? (read Trolls)
Yeah Airtel is going down the drain 🙁
I hear they are concentrating on the Retail and all that division. And I hear the mobile service is bad because of 3G testing.
I wonder they give us connection within a day or two, but when we want to disconnect its same case with every ISPs, i too had terrible experiences with reliance and tikona.
Customer service is a thing which Airtel and many of its non existent competitors need to learn. It is just not "Customer Service", if the customer has to call in 10 times to get a job done, and has to explain the problem each and every time…Unfortunately, this market, has been monopolized by Airtel and no one else is coming up with better services/plans for quite some time now…Its like 'my way or the highway' for the consumers…
chirag…facing the same problem whats the way to get out of it
I had shifted from Hathway to Airtel 3 years back. Completed all the procedures and formalities. Since then every month without fail I have been receiving internet usage bills from them. Complaints have been to no avail and I have given up since there seems no end in sigh. I just hope years down the line I am not harassed with any legal issues.
@Chirag : Any updates on the Airtel thing ?
Nothing as of now. They just ignored the case.
And beware, BSNL threatened to sue me because of the same issue once. But, I didn't do anything and neither did they.
So Airtel sent me a bill again. This time the standard 2Mbps plan bill. I've lost all hope.