[JagMan]

because 2g spectrum is cheap. 3g spectrum was expensive. its all those charges that will help in paying off the spectrum fees that all the operators paid.

[mykal shoemaker]

I think Airtel is doing such drama with everyone.
I got one datacard from my company around jun. the plan was for 899+tax (991.60 total) for 3.5GB.

I got first bill in Jun for some 672/- (as they kept some other plan.next month they changed the plan)
second bill 901. Then they started the dramas. They merged my existing voice connection (partial) and data card in next bill and gave me a bill of 1117/-.I paid all first 3 without much checking.I logged a complaint immediately.

From that bill onwards they started giving me bills like 1500,1600 etc.

I never got a promised bill of 991.60.But ,I started paying only that amount,since my company contract is for the same.

the issue still goes on, and they are adding late fee everymonth. I've tried 121,nodal officers,appellate authority etc. Its now deactivated.But don't know how long they will send new bills.

I've escalated this as corporate complaint and hope they will close and clear it now.
(meanwhile I got some offer mails from them,for 10% discount in rental for 6 month or 50% discount for 3 months etc.I told them to correct the issues first and lets talk later )

[ashwinsid]

I have been using Airtel postpaid since 2002.

Last month, I get an SMS from airtel saying 'volume based 3G plan has been activated on your number'. Immediately I called them to ask why is 3G activated without my consent. They changed it back to GPRS but now, they did not have the Rs.98 plan I was on. Instead was shifted to Rs.148 plan. I protested and complained. Nothing happened.

Today I tweeted about it, filed a complaint with Public Grievance Redressal portal. Immediately I get a call from @Airtel_Presence. I had to spend 10 mins to explain everything. Yet they did not get what my issue was. They kept saying sir Rs.98 plan is not available thats why you are on Rs.148 plan, no sir you are not on 3G etc. I blasted them and explained how tariff plan cannot be changed for 6 months once its active etc. At the end the person who called got impatient and asked what I want from them. I said I want to know why 3G plans are activated without consent? And I want the excess amount I am paying on GPRS to be waived off. So they waived Rs.300 (Rs.148-Rs.98 = 50. x 6 months). But no answer why 3G was activated. This 3G activation scam happens to lot of my friends too.

[nawalsingal]

Almost all telecom companies are indulging in such practices. Prepaid customers are more of a target for cheating. Invariably, every month, some amount(mostly 25-50 bucks for some flimsy VAS, not activated by user) is deducted from their balance & most of the time, subscriber, being ignorant, doesn't even know he's been robbed. It may seem small amount but look at the subscriber base(600 million) & majority of these are prepaid ones. If you take even 2/3rds to be prepaid, amount is 400million*25(at least) works out to 10 BILLION. What a fraud. Add to this, amount scammed from Postpaids & total goes even higher. A good number(My guess is 90%) of them give up the fight after getting the charges cancelled from future date. What about money looted in earlier bills? & NO, CC's of ALL telcos are bad, real bad. Unless you have knowledge & patience to fight till the top level, you can't get your grievance addressed. I had one bad experience with RCOM CDMA, long back. That time, I fought till my issue got escalated to Chairman's office & finally resolved. Now I don't wait for stupid CC's to waste my time & directly fire a mail to Corporate center & Every time, the issue gets addressed in a couple of hours, with Apology mail & phone call.. Should work in other cases as well.
BTW, we got a refund of "Lemon Car" Sumo Grande from TATA only after escalating it to Chairman's office. May be way to go in India???

[Visaster]

My friend who works in airtel told me that they do charge extra on the bill on postpaid customers on a gradually increasing basis. Which is used for the marketing budget of the company. This was 12 years back when airtel was just growing.
I wonder what will be the condition now.
I stick to prepaid for calls and airtel broadband is strictly for data usage with unlimited plan so they can not cook up.
They can easily make billions by charging few rupees per customer.
Same goes with vodafone/reliance too. No one is perfect.

The airtel customer care call center is just next to my work place in Chennai and I had a word with the employees there.
Sad they are mostly 20yr old just passed out college students from small town with no awareness over anything, technical knowledge is beyond their scoop. Imagine they get paid Rs6000 only which has to cover their accommodation, food and everything.

[ampere]

Airtel 3G rates come down

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/13236712.cms

EDIT: I checked Airtel site. Tarrifs dont change I think. The only amount that changes is the charge post consumption of the slab from 10 to 3p.

[phamilyman]

Hi, after four years of peace with Airtel - i have now been hit by this fraud myself. Here is the email i sent to them.

My billing cycle is from 11th to 10th.

My latest bill was raised on the 10th of May. So the current billing cycle starts on the 11th. on the 11th night around 2240 hrs i called airtel and asked to switch to the 675 Rs Airtel 3G plan with 3.125GB free. (originally i had 199 rs, 3GB on 2G plan)

Here is a summary of the usage alerts from airtel which show that your system is clearly BROKEN AND ERRONEOUS.
As on date - Reported usage (MB)
13-May 2896
14-May 2915
15-May 2949
17-May 3049

i.e daily usage of 38 MB

Can anyone help me understand how someone with such usage pattern can download 2896 MB in 3 days? HOW?
Mind you, of those 3 days, 1 day was on 2G, and of the 2 days on 3G, I was admitted in hospital with gall bladder stones on the 3rd day.

As per my current usage, i should take 75 days to use up 2896 MB, yet AD-SERVICE message says i ran up that usage in 3 days?

Correct my bill, else I will PORT OUT and dispute this in consumer court. I don't pay 1500 every month for billing fraud.

To add insult to injury - i tweeted to airtel presence, who promised to look into it on 14th, but the lady who called back, instead said two extremely stupid things:
a. She tried to discuss my previous month's bill - which was NOT the concern.
b. She says that she cannot do anything for the current unbilled usage of data - she will look into it only when the bill is raised. I'm sorry but this is a pathetic attitude. Airtel is sending wrong warnings to its customers and instead of correcting its mistakes, you are saying, i will not correct anything, i will bill the customer and then see what is to be done. PATHETIC.

So let me request again:
CORRECT/RESET my internet usage records right away. I DID NOT USE 2896MB FROM 11 MAY - 13 MAY. It is IMPOSSIBLE.

Regards

I'll follow it up nicely else i'll port out and definitely complain to TRAI and consumer court. Wonder how they think they can get away with such blatant cheating!!

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

i have now been hit by this fraud myself.

Now its my turn. My normal 1 month data usage is between 350 to 400 MB for past many years on my 2G post paid connection. I use only for checking & syncing emails on my phone. According to my plan 500 MB is free and excess amount is charged at 10 paisa per 10kb.

I was surprised to see the bill show 1.2 GB mobile internet usage. On close inspection of the itemized bill, this is what I found:
Usage for 1 night (in 8 hours): 900 MB (~Rs 9,000)
Rest of the month usage: 300 MB (~Rs 3,000)
Total: 1.2 GB (~Rs 12,000)
Free data: 500 MB (discount of ~Rs 5,000)

So I have been hit with internet usage bill of ~Rs 7,000 for the month. Download split of 900MB is again interesting. It is downloaded in exact chucks of 5MB at equal intervals of 2 minutes for 8 hours. Talking of data traffic being burst.

I complained to airtel customer care. My requests were simple:
1) Provide logs for 900 MB usage in 8 hours (on 2G connection) and I will pay up. Or,
2) Cancel the charges for 8 hours absurd mobile internet bill & reissue fresh bill.

The customer care tried explaining the bill and after my strong mails, this is what they have to say,

We regret to inform you that we are unable to cater your request to provide the Internet access logs as we do not have the privilege for the same.

I reported to airtel appellate and they got back with this,

We wish to inform you that on receipt of your complaint we have examined our records and found that the charges levied towards the GPRS usages are correct and valid as per the usages initiate your from end.

We would also like to inform you that as per records proper discounts as per 500 MB GPRS Free pack have been provided in your above mentioned invoice number. Therefore, we regret the infeasibility to provide any reversal towards the same.

I reported on pgportal. airtel resolved it by saying,

On receipt of your concern, we reviewed your bill and have verified the charges levied in your bill towards mobile internet. There appears to be no overcharging in your account. We would like to assure you that we have deployed a state of the art billing system which ensures that your bill is always error free.

pgportal closed this complaint. I guess airtel have learnt to circumvent pgportal complaints.

Yesterday, a team leader from airtel collection team visited and informed me that they never give logs for internet usage. Their legal team informed me that all discounts have been applied, I have to pay up or face case in civil court.

The whole of airtel believes the bill is ultimate sacrosanct document and there is nothing else truth beyond that. At every stage they tried explaining the bill and claim that the billing software has done its job correctly. In my case, nobody in airtel find downloading 900MB in 8 hours (which is at ~350kbps) on 2G connection appears a bit out of place.

I am not averse to going via legal route. But I would like to hear how other members resolved their case. Is there anything else I can try?

PS: I wish I had prepaid, where airtel internet fraud would be limited to balance amount .

[condor]

Typical response. They will say the charges are correct & that they cannot provide the logs. And they will never see the simple technical irregularity of 5mb chunks every 2 minutes for 8 hours.

[pratyush6]

Just ask them to show the feasibility of how can someone download 5mbs in 2 mins on 2G. This is a joke. I had once been scammed the same way but talked my way out of it.

I have also sent emails to airtel stating that once my 1gb limit is complete, please stop my data connection, if you still keep it on, then I won't pay up. Never happened anymore.

[silversteed]

Originally Posted by msdivy

Now its my turn...

Been in that spot. Scaretel is a bunch of crooks. It's alarming that they've learnt to circumvent PG Portal complaints.

Not sure if it'll work, but send a porting request. They would try everything to retain such a 'premium' customer.

[motorpsycho]

Hello All,

I was using a Airtel 3g connection and had requested the same to be cancelled on the 4th Dec.
I went to an airtel outlet and had the connection cancelled. Later I got a call from airtel agent urging not to cancel the same , instead to move to a prepaid connection and told I would not be billed as long as I did not use it. Later I got another call from another agent who contradicted the 1st that I would be billed, so immediately I spoke to airtel and sent an email stating to treat the email as my final confirmation to cancel my connection.

15 days later I called up again just to check on my request, they had not terminated my connection and also had billed me.

I really do not want to pay the bill, as I have not used their services after my email and phone call. Can the email I sent airtel hold any weight when I talk to them. Also what are my options? I have informed them that I will not be paying the bill.

[mpksuhas]

Originally Posted by motorpsycho

Hello All,

I was using a Airtel 3g connection and had requested the same to be cancelled on the 4th Dec.

Usually they ask you to pay up the bill for few days after your previous bill and your disconnection date. When you are paying the same get it done from an airtel customer service center and not online. You will get a receipt for the same which can be used as proof if they come up with bills later.
I did the same when cancelling my broadband with them since one of my colleague was getting bills even 4 months after disconnection.

[jinojohnt]

Similar issue is present with Idea Mobile 3G also. They deduct (significantly) more MBs than you have actually uploaded and downloaded.
I am using an Idea 3G Mobile internet (prepaid), hence I know.

[mints21]

Airtel is one company that I have been associated with since 1997. I have seen this company when it was excellent, then it dropped to good, better and now worst. The 3G fraud is the latest. I too caught them on this, had a lot of discussions with the customer care team and the end result was nothing.

Further, I switched off one of my personal phone for a month and to my surprise the itemized bill still showed me using the 3G services at some stages during the billing cycle.

I raised the issue, made a lot of hue and cry, called in the network team (which they have outsourced to Ericson) and finally got some relief. Things were better for two months and again they were back on the same platform.

I thought no point wasting time on arguing, applied for number portability and they rejected it mentioning some contractual obligations. While I do recall that there can be no contractual obligation since the number is from the time when no one had ever thought of portability.

Now, I have decided to move to Vodafone for the interim period and I will be taking this case for the rejection of portability request with TRAI.