Annoying Airtel (Well Nothing new)

Nothing pisses me off like a bad customer service!

I pay money to your service and expect value for each and every paisa that i pay.

I am one among the many who use a touch screen mobile. Yeah that also happens to be the so called smart phone.Hence I also data services.

Along other spam messages i receive[Yeah i have subscribed to DND] there comes a message on 12 Apr-20.48
I have subscribed for GAMES MANIA_5
The reaction of yours truly was WTF! I dont play any games and have never played any games except for the occasional minesweeper and the legendary angry birds. [Yeah i am one of a rare specimen]

I call the customer care,blast at them. They take the request for deactivation[Ref #: F1037597005]
I raise the same same issue in twitter to @airtel_presence. I get a canned response share your contact details we will call back.
I get a call when i was in middle of something so asked him to call back later. Later,I get a call from broadband when the issue is with my mobile and one month goes away and i never get any call from any folks.

When i open my bill to pay, I see am being charged 5 per day from 12-Apr.
I call the customer care, unable to resolve, the agent volunteers to escalate to that the supervisor and i get the below response

1)The service was deactivated
2)But,The service was reactivated [Oh yeah of course by yours truly as he doesn't know how to use a smart phone and more importantly how to finger i mean use his finger]
3)Hence the bill.

He doesn't know how it got activated, he cannot assure that the activation will not happen again.
He doesn't know why i never got a notification, when i reactivated it.

I come back tweet to @airtel_presence praise(sic) them they are the best customer service and after asking them is it because of the lack of the SIM or the lack of network coverage that they are still not able to get back to me even after a month.

Now a person calls from Airtel takes a look at everything, when i ask him, why I am i billed day in day out even after the deactivation, he accepts, though the agent has made a note it has been deactivated, he never deactivated!

Now here are the questions:
1) Why does it gets activated when i havent activated? Why does it just notifies me with out getting a confirmation? How do you even let such a system exist in the first place?
2) If Airtel is just the content provider, why does it allow the vendor[GAMES MANIA] to behave in such a manner? Is the revenue cut from GAMES MANIA much important than a Customer?
3) Why is that in the customer service, no one monitors or tracks things properly?
4) Doesn't Airtel conducts audits or process checks with the customer service vendor now and then?
5) When the Airtel guy can answer me effectively and if a customer service vendor cannot handle me, why to have a third party service vendor?
6) When i will be fined 100/- for a late payment even by a minute, why should i pay my bill promptly and wait for a month to get a refund?  More importantly who will compensate for the time i spend with the customer care for such a long time and more importantly your time by making you read all these!
7) I did ask them, I need the mail id of Vice President for the Customer Service, he said it is confidential. Those folks have my phone number mail id and address and you are a publicly traded company and he cannot reveal the mail id of Vice President of Customer care!

The issues doesnt ends over there. I think they are first (hopefully the only one) to charge the customer for talking to the customer care!

When you pay the bills, online, Whenever i copy paste the number at number field it never accepts it as valid number
It asks for the mail id if it is mobile bill and sends the receipt but it doesnt asks for the mail id when i want to pay my broadband bill
God knows why such discrepancies.

No I am not alone, Please check the https://twitter.com/#!/Airtel_Presence to see how many complaints they receive in an hour?

Now,if only their process/service/systems were proper, what is the need for a customer service? Well if you buy a product and if the product is too good and you dont face too many problems will you worry much about the after sales support or service? Similarly if only Airtel had good systems or process in place, the chance for the customer to complain comes down, so out of that the complaint of bad customer service too obviously comes down. Just dont focus or worry about proper balances and checks ensure there is no need for balance and checks

I really wonder how they design their systems or the senior management folks do or manage the outsourcing but we get to see articles like these.
http://blogs.hbr.org/govindarajan/2012/05/telecoms-competitive-solution-outsourcing.html

Nope I am not against the outsourcing. All i am saying is manage the outsourcing properly.
May be the right question to ask rather than all of this "Why I am i still their customer?"

Sincerely,
Concerned Stockholder

p.s
If Airtel had been in US would it have been possible for me to get all the dissatisfied customers and file a class action suit against them and made lakhs #justasking

Amazing Airtel

Yeah, it was me the word AMAZING in front of Airtel. I am neither stoned nor my account has been hacked.

Last week sometime, just like that my broadband stopped working. Even the Phone went dead. I was not sure how to call the customer. Some good soul suggested call 121.

Calling 121 from your mobile takes you to the mobile complaint center but not to the broadband center.

Surprisingly when called 121, rather than giving me the above sermon, he just gave me 044 44444198 to call and press 1 2 3 to reach the customer care directly.

Again the customer care guy was so prompt, gave me the ticket number and the resolution time. He was even frank enough to say, the executive will come only by ten and not earlier.

The very next day even before i ran out of patience the service executive called me, asked me for the landmark and came in no time.

Fixed it quick, tested and went back. As luck would have it, as soon as he was gone, the broadband alone stopped working.

When i called the exchange directly, rather than the customer care, they were kind enough to accomadate me and fixed it back quick,again. Very well, he could have asked me to raise or reopen a ticket or could have given me lame excuses.

It was amazing customer service, I would say.

May be the Airtel had gotten its act together still there is something that deserves our attention.

It is not the CEO, it is not the grandiose vision and values that lies in the decorated plaques in offices. It is not the million dollar marketing campaign. It is the guy at the bottom of the pyramid, who interacts with the customer directly day in day out makes all the difference to brand, adds value, leads to the customer satisfaction, sustains the very survival of the company.

N.B
Earlier Airtel goof ups can be seen here, here and here.

Open letter to Airtel

I am still an Airtel customer and even a minority share holder inspite of this and this! Not just me, my entire family[family here means me, my mom, dad and sis] is an Airtel family.

Sis messaged, she wanted a prepaid recharge for 50 rupees.
Being an uber-cool techie and an airtel broadband subscriber, rather than going to a corner shop, logged in to airtel. Clicked "Recharge Prepaids"

It asks for my mobile number, amount to be recharged and the mobile number to be recharged.
It also has a image verification where one has to enter the string that is shown.

Even though I typed it right, it gave an error message that I did not enter the string properly.
It was throwing the same "string not matched" error even after several permutuations and combinations.

Okie, I will give it the benefit of doubt and I could be visually challenged, may be a sticky finger, or faulty key board, but once if i type the string wrong, shouldnt it give me another string rather than the same string??!!

Then it says, you are a first time mchek user and sends a pin to my mobile number.
I am supposed to fill this up in the website. Once filled it prompts me to enter a new mchek number of my choice.

Now i am clueless what should i do? No instructions on how many characters or could it be alphabets or numericals or alphanumeric!! Only after typing something wrong an instruction pops up enter six digit number.

Then it asks to enter my credit/debit card number. After entering, it asks for my expiration date and then the CVV number. Only to get rejected with an error message.[May be cause i was using a ICICI debit card and RBI said it is a foreign bank! :)]

Imagine, All this for the sake of recharging for FIFTY RUPEES, which I can do it in less than five minutes by walking across the street.

Whereas in their post paid bill payment, all it asks is how do you want to pay?
Once when you choose netbanking,it asks for the service[mobile or broadband], airtel number, and  the bank.

Once the bank is chosen, it is redirected to the bank payment gateway.
Why cant the same mechanism used for prepaid customers? Ask the number, amount, bank, take to payment gateway of the bank, get the money,give the talktime.

Dear Airtel folks, I really wonder who designs your systems, who tests them, and who signs off the user acceptance system and do you ever use what you created? Do you people ever heard of something called as "In simplicity there is no complexity"

Either get a new IT partner or make sure your current IT partner is worth the money  he is charging you.
Or stop investing money in building such systems, which could be used for acquisitions!

P.S
Let me run to the corner shop before my little sissy starts writing a open letter to my mommy about my insensitivity towards recharging her mobile!

P.S. P.S
Hope my current employer is not offering the IT services to airtel and have not put my foot where my mouth is!

Thank God, Airtel is not God!

Airtel announces, you can tweet from your airtel but also tells standard rates will apply. Well what the hell does "STANDARD RATES" mean? Call Customer Care na.

Me:[after repeating the number twice] boss may i know what is the standard rates for twitter message from mobile?
Customer Care :Sorry Sir, we do not have that information. But Sir, if you send any message on diwali, you will be charged.
Me: Can you get me the info on twitter message rates? Will it be charged or go in as a part of my SMS pack?
CC: Sir, I can get back to you within 24 hours Sir.
Me: Wait, Did you say that my messages will be charged tomorrow on diwali.
CC: Yes Sir, tomorrow you will be charged 50p per message.
Me: hey come on i have a SMS free pack in which i can send unlimited STD/local and I pay RS.X every month as a part of the rental.
CC: Parroting again, yes sir, but sir, tomorrow we will charge you sir. So please do not send any messages sir[he doesnt wants me to send cause i will be charged, so caring towards the customer]

Few Days back, some one rightly tweeted ," If Airtel was god, they would charge you for breathing"

P.S
I ain't that Dumb enough to have a hope that i will get a call from customer care
Looking forward For the implementation of the Mobile Number Portability

Annoying Airtel

Airtel, One of the largest communication company in India. Agreed, Still I wonder why these people never get certain basic things right. (Nah I am not talking about the IVR Interactive voice response system, poor customer service, Billing Issues, I shall post about them later, when i could think rationally rather than carried away by emotion. My blood begins to boil, when i think about them.)

1. They don't have a contact email id, in their contact us page. (or for that matter, anywhere in their website in an easily accessible manner.)
2. They could specify in home page, which browser and the resolution suits well for their website. (Say Best viewed in IE 6.0 and 800X600 resolution) Especially their pop ups.
3. The online registration. You should specify a username and your mobile number in the initial registration form. You will get a password. You should login. There you will get another registration form with other questions. Only then you would be successful. I really wonder why this two step process. Is it to ensure that the person has a valid airtel connection? Can't they ensure from their database is it a valid number, eligible for online registration. Why can't they welcome the customer with one single registration page?
4. Above all, Does at least the second registration post is fine with out bugs,The drop down menu for day in the date of birth is not working properly.

By the way have you ever tried , where you reach when you enter airtel.com

Note:
All this bugs/errors at the time of the blog post.
Being a software tester by profession, i wonder who the hell would be their technical service partner and how they could have signed off the User acceptance test. Damn the airtel CIO! :)