About a month ago I toured Hyderabad, a visit I would remember for a long time for many good reasons. But it was AirTel that gave me a shocker right at the start of the trip. Not long after I boarded the Kacheguda Express, I realised that my mobile was running out of balance and I needed a recharge desperately to be able to stay on Roaming in Andhra. Since there was no way I could recharge onboard, I requested my friend Pramod to recharge INR 200 for my number. Seconds later I got the recharge confirmation SMS from AirTel which made me say WTF!
WTF
MRP Rs. 200.00 for a talktime of Rs. 1.00?!?!?! What age are we living in? In the times where providers give full talktime or infact more than full talktime and have call rates at 29p per minute, this SMS came to me as a shocker. Soon after that the train went into out of coverage area which did not help me one little bit. I could not even call the customer care, nor have any talktime to make my calls or even send SMS-es. FMyLife at that time with me traveling alone amidst Tamil and Telugu co-passengers and having nobody to interact or call someone over the phone.
Travelling alone in a compartment with #Tamil and #Telugu co-passengers. FMyLife.—
Aditya Kavoor (@akavoor) December 23, 2009
Till today I do not know where the money has disappeared nor have any explanation for this. Surely the balance does not reflect upon balance enquiry. So, here is AirTel looting public money and thereby being the costliest mobile service provider in the world.
PS: I have filed a complaint with the AirTel Customer Care and awaiting a response.
Generally happens if the recharge was some kind of offer. e.g. if it might’ve been Rs89 (STD), it’ll say Re0.01 talktime because thats the case. But AFAIK, 200 isn’t such an option. Most probably they’ll revert the mistake. Maybe the costliest, but having the best quality and network (and gprs bandwidth
)
True. Keeping any damn offer for a standard denomination of RC 200 is utter foolishness.
Airtel sucks. and thats the bottom line. Check this post too. I am also a fed up customer. http://www.chowchowbath.com/2009/12/06/airtel-once-fairtel-now-unfairtel-shortly-finishedtel/
I have done a couple of prepaid recharges for friends – there are 2 options – validity extension and top up. I am suspecting your friend chose the option to extend your validity instead of topping up.
Nah. That cannot be the case. My sim has a lifetime validity.
hi, you should contact customer care and mention the transaction id. Erecharge system of any operator in the world runs on complex software platform that are subjected to few logical or human errors. If it is any mistake in Airtel’s part , they will adjust your amount or may be that it is you or your friend are doing some mistake in understanding the scheme.It may be a validity extension scheme or any special scheme that offers you some other benefits like 100 free sms or night time free etc. It is a very wrong notion on subscribers part that operators loots their money. An operator generally performs crores of recharges a day and failures can happen and that can be rectifed but only when you report with valid details.Always use *123# to check your actual TT along with checking the confirmation SMS. What you receive after recharge can be wrong(often it happens due to human mistakes of not updating TTs in SW systems) but while he receives the TT perfectly.
Well Aditya, its just Rs 200. Why u making such a big deal… giggle giggle……. ;=P
Gr8