This is India: I Hate Airtel

When we moved to Kolkata one of our first things we did was to get cell phones. Not only is this a necessary tool for life here, but it was also required that we show a bill for our new mobile service in order to avoid paying a late penalty with T-mobile (our cell service in the US), who had told us that all we had to do was fax them our bill from India and they would waive the $400 + early cancellation fine ($200 for each phone). As with most things in India, this is a not a swift process. Our first bill did not arrive until early February. We faxed this to T-mobile, got a confirmation of arrival through the fax and thought things were complete. However, we had to do this every month for 3 months until T-mobile put a collection agency on us and finally, with their help, we cleared the fine.

When it came time to get a landline and our internet service, we naturally thought of Airtel, thinking that it would be nice to be dealing with just one company, and the plans they offered seem to meet our needs. In hindsight, we foolishly selected a 2mbps service that had a 6gb limit. This seemed like a plenty for our needs and usage. We could, in theory, download the whole 4th season of Lost from a bittorrent site and still have 1.5gb to spare. We weren’t going to do this (at least not all within one month) so it seemed safe. Our first month of service we were not yet moved in to our house. We probably used the internet 5 or 6 days during this time period and almost exclusively for sending and receiving e-mails. However, our first bill showed that we had gone over our 6gb limit – counting a whopping 7.5gb in a 15 day period when we weren’t living at home. This seemed impossible. We called to dispute the bill and heard for the first time, the company line on disputes of overages. “Your computer downloads updates in the background without you knowing.” I laughed at them as we both have Macs and automatic updates have been disabled. We paid the bill which was not much over in cost, but asked that someone call us as we wanted to discuss the overage.

The next month rolled around and once again we were presented with a slight overage in our usage. However, this time we had been actually living in our apartment and using the internet. Still, there were some strange items in the bill. Like the day that I, apparently downloaded 1.5gb of data even though we were out of town. Again we were told that our computers – laptops that were not turned on and mine was with me on our trip – were downloading data without our knowledge. We once again registered a complaint and paid the minimal overage cost.

However, month 3 would prove to be our downfall. Our bill was vastly over the limit – even though the bill showed 3 days of heavy usage while we were in Hyderabad with no computers in the house and another 2 days of downloading while we were staying at my in-laws house – using their internet connection. This bill was too much to pay and just register a complaint. We needed to know what was going on. My wife spent hours sparring with the Airtel customer service reps. They tried the company line, then when that seemed to not be working, moved on to phase 2 of their negotiations. They offered to cut our bill by a 1/4. Not only was this not very generous it didn’t address our contention that we should owe Zero to them. We agreed to switch to an unlimited plan that cut our speed significantly, however, we made it clear that we were not paying this bill and that someone had to show us proof that these data transfers (often in the middle of the night) were real.

It wasn’t 2 weeks later that our service was cut, because we had failed to pay our bill. Again my wife spent hours on the phone scolding service reps and listening to the same old stories. We told them to cancel our service and that we were going to go with another provider. This lead into the pleading phase from Airtel. They sent an “engineer” over to inspect our service and beg us to stay with them and that he would help us defray the bill cost. We had already initiated the process with another provider and told him to leave.

Airtel, and so many other corporations in India, seem to act in the completely opposite way that someone like Seth Godin would suggest. They treat customers terribly, milking them for every cent (paise) in their pursuit of short term profits, then, the minute it appears that you are leaving, they plead and offer the moon. If Airtel had wiped clean our bill and explained how the service works and kept us as a happy customer. The unfortunate part is that all these internet providers are the same. They push the high speed low transfer limit packages and charge heavily for overages. Each one shows unlimited options on their websites, but when you ask about them in person or on the phone, they act like these packages don’t exist. So we waited for the BSNL guy to come and hook up our internet. Each day he promises to come, each day he doesn’t. Not only has this cut us off from the world, but it’s affecting business as well.

Then we got a call from Airtel. They asked why we canceled our service and what the dispute was. This being the dispute we made in March, April, May, and June. Now… in July, they were finally ready to listen to what our dispute was. We told him our problem, and he seemed to understand. He offered to cut our bill very significantly and we took that offer and canceled our impending BSNL line. Airtel promised this would occur on Friday, after we paid what was left of the bill. The promise soon faded after the bill was paid and our service was not restored until Sunday night at about 11:45pm.

So Airtel still sucks, but BSNL and the other service providers aren’t any better. We remain tied to them until someday when it’s not a month long wait to install new service. We had almost 3 weeks without the internet and I can safely say that I can’t live without it. I hope I never go this long without internet ever again.