How Airtel become worst cellular company in India

Disclaimer : Following is not meant to be a hate/insult review. But is my personal experience in real life. I am not affiliated to any cellular company at the time of writing this article. If you have any problem/complaints regarding the content of this article, please use contact page on this website. Due to massive email requests and busy schedules, I may not respond to all of the emails.


If you know me for last 8 years, only thing I never changed is my personal mobile number. I was Airtel fan since I started using mobile. Their extended support for not just calls and SMS but data plans attracted a lot of youth. But good people are not always good. And now it’s Airtel who turned bad ass. If you need more clarity they have turned worst than Indian post office!

Airtel needs to make a clean image

It’s not the time people had to stick with one cellular company like it was once. I brought Airtel sim when it costed near a thousand rupees. Now any sim is free of cost and plans and offers are everywhere the way you need it. Now I use one personal and another private sim, one for iPad and three landlines as in two offices and one at home besides my Vodafone mobile which is used for business. Ohh yea, last month I cancelled one Airtel broadband with landline and switched to MTS Mblaze, which gives me better stability. I believe it’s time to move on the rest as well. Here is why.

Airtel is in loss, so they are trying to juice existing customers and regain stability. If you get crappy SMS alerts which give you no use, remember you are being charged. Even if you don’t activate it, Airtel automatically does it for you! And not every customer care executives can find what’s active on your account. So keep calling them every day to see if anything is activated. Ohh wait, they will charge you for calling customer care too. That is, to solve an issue created by them, you need to spend your time and money! WTF!! It’s my personal experience. Listen to conversations I had two times with Airtel CC. First guy didn’t know what’s active on my number. On Second time call they says SMS alert was active for a long time and they refuse refund. Dear Airtel, you lost the first balls here.

Now it’s Airtel broadband. If you check my twitter timeline, you can see every month at least twice I tweet my Airtel broadband is down. Every time they say different reasons. Mostly being cable cut. Why don’t they fucking get some good shit to replace the poor quality cables? They have a reason. It’s outsourced. Bengali daily waged people are the once who aligns the connection. They do it like it’s just rope! Now another argument is that modem malfunction. When we took connection, we brought it from Airtel. Now that’s too outsourced. So if you have a complaint for modem, you better replace it with new one without telling anyone. Because nobody at Airtel knows where to complain or what to do when modem is not working. Recently I brought MTS Mblaze, which gives me better speed than 2mbps Airtel ever gave. So I recommend it than Airtel BB and specially Mblaze is wireless so no hassle with Bengalis who don’t know Malayalam or how to cable properly.

Airtel Landline is fun. They can give you connection. But won’t provide a phone! Last year, I brought 7 Tata Indicom landlines with zero upfront payment and APBX with automated call routing. Airtel wasn’t capable of proving single landline connection that time because they didn’t have free sockets available. They asked for 20 days time more time after I waited for one week hearing their promise. But later I took one connection with BB and phone. Now, they don’t provide phone when you take a new connection. The same phone device that TATA gave last year, Airtel is charging for it. I said fuck it; I’ll buy a good one from store.

Customer care people are worst than post office people. It’s not that I have any personal enmity with anyone at post office. When I was kid, I used to go post office for paying my home BSNL bills. They were treating people like we are in some refugee camp begging for food form their home. May be its just that post officers or may be it’s that it is the only Govnt office I walked in several times. I haven’t been in post office for years now. Not sure if I will ever walk in again. Post offices are so dead for me. Now everything is online and courier services are good at speed. Now back to Airtel customer care.

Last week I was traveling through Ernakulam – Kannur – Chennai – Bangalore – Kannur. I use Airtel sim on my iPad so that I can access on Demand 3G when I’m away from wifi. It worked fine till I reached Chennai. Then all of a sudden data is not available. I thought it’s because of Roaming. But everyone offers free 3G data roaming. It was not sorted when I came back home. So I tried USSD query to see if it connects. It failed with no response. Then I called to its number from another phone. It said my number is temporarily blocked!! Time for another WTF!!

I called customer care, one Mr. Yasser tried to help me and said someone reported sim missing on this number and so my sim was blocked! I asked who reported and when? He didn’t have answer and I asked to connect me to seniors. He said ok, and I waited few minutes then he came back and said top teams aren’t available. He promised to fix it in an hour and I asked him to send confirmation on my personal number as iPad can’t receive SMS and calls. He said he don’t have its facility to call another number even if it’s the number I’m calling to complain! I asked him to call me manually from his phone. He said he can’t call. (WTF!) I belied it will fix that night. Because I had to book tickets next morning at 8 when the IRCTC Tatkal opens. Bullshit happened next day, it was still blocked. As I don’t plan for an alternative connection, I got one hour delayed to book ticket and my mom and I had to travel in Chennai Mail general coach from Kannur. We got wait listed AC reservation only due to the delay in booking. A sleep less journey! (WTF). I called customer care for 3rd time to solve the block issue, this time a lady said she just unblocked my number and it will be active in an hour. It didn’t happen for now when I’m writing this, which is 24+ hours after that call. Now I’m in Chennai, I can’t call Customer Care. It gives no option to talk to them. Just IVR. But
I just got one advertising call from Airtel comedy while I’m roaming. No comments on it than WTF!

Later that day, I got two calls from Airtel saying they saw my complaints on twitter and they are checking what the reason it got blocked is. Anyways, I’m going to buy new sim from BSNL for iPad. Fuck Airtel.

Remiz

Remixed version of unstable human emotions and thirst of mankind actions. UX designer, UI developer and HE of WebCastle Media Pvt LTD

13 Responses

  1. Madhu says:

    All these service providers are thriving at the cost of govt official. These private company know that if they bribe the corrupt official once thay can live long without any service. Thanks to rampant corruption in India we Indians suffers due to these incompetent bastards like Airtel or Hathway…

  2. hamza says:

    man i cant even use 3g every time i try ut says that ur free data is more than 50 mb i font even know what that means. Fuck airtel

  3. Melvin Jose says:

    That airtel which I am using is a fuck bullshit .it has a speed of just 10 or 12 kbps. Now without any reason I cant send or recieve any calls and message.i like to change my sim but I am scared to do it .as I think it will happen in other sim too. Can you prefer a best sim card with highest broadband speed

  4. deepak says:

    Airtel is SHIT , trust me . WORST service provider

  5. ashkai says:

    Even i face the prob, your no. Is temperorily blocked and i got rectified luckily! Airtel really sucks! I was a fan. Now it sucks! Really sucks!i m using a 3G pack but still i m able to use oly 2G! WEN I complained tat fucker in customer care asking me to change setting in my mobile and telling its prob wit my mob! I m using net more than 5yrs and i kno wether its in 2G or 3G. Still its not solved and i was pissed off n left it!

  6. Vir says:

    vodafone is best for BB , HATHWAY best for cable-net , for wireless it is Reliance … even if Airtel gives me free plan i will not buy Airtel for any product ..

  7. Tejash says:

    FUCK YOU AIRTEL!!!

  8. vishkai says:

    airtel response sucks. customer care people cares but not those fucking assholes sitting as manager in all Airtel office , ARC and lobbies.. they think we are fools and they are big fucking intellectuals.

  9. Sankar says:

    I Really Support you Yar.

    Airtel toooooooooooo Worst.
    Airtel was barathiya beggar cutting crores & Crores of amount from balance & nobody respond us even if we call ( that too by paying Charge) they dont respond. The final best answer is — Ok sir we will check.

  10. Amass says:

    You’re right, customer care isn’t great. But i get them, the payment is not worth it considering the effort.

  11. Himanshu says:

    Yes Dude you are right.
    My brother had an Airtel Broadband and when he shifted it he had to disconnect it.He paid all his expenses and had a NOC from them but they kept on tormenting him with calls to clear his never existing dues.I also have an Airtel BB and their modem works whenever it wishes to.I got the modem checked and the service center said it was ok.Moreover I had heard in the past that Airtel people here even tried to THREATEN people.In one such case a young woman here was imposed with bills she never owed and when she refused to pay after many calls from Airtel,She suddenly got a call from a number who claimed to be a High Court lawyer and said that she will be sued within 2 weeks for not paying up the expenses as a complaint has been lodged against her.Couple of days later she enquired at the high court and found out that there is no lawyer there with the name he mentioned on the phone to her…again LOL n WTF???? 😀

  12. Lijeesh says:

    I use BSNL BB for home and two 3G connections for my android and netbook. Services are good until some problem occurs. The support is poor in solving problems. You may have to make endless phone calls and visits to telephone exchange if you are ‘lucky’ 🙂

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