[cnaganathan]

My experience in Chennai - I do not want to disclose the name as I have been promised a resolution and to some extent it involves my employer as well.

I took this connection in 2006 under CUG when I switched employment and had paid a Caution Deposit of INR250. As I rose up the ranks, I became eligible for a company paid connection by Jun 2008. Rather than go for a new number, I decided to switch my number to my employer's name. Request was made to the provider in Aug 08 but no action was taken till mid Dec 08 but my employer started paying my monthly bills. Finally in Dec 08 I was informed that unless I clear all current outstanding, the transfer cannot be effected. I paid Nov 08 bill and asked the provider to let me know the balance as on date for payment. Service provider wanted me to make a blind payment assuring me of refund of excess which I refused. In the meantime my employer also made the payment in Dec 08 for the same bill. This is when the muddle started. Provider did not show this amount to my credit.
In Jan 09, when I noticed this, I wrote to the Enterprise Customer Services division of the provider highlighting the unaccounted payment and the pending transfer request. After another month of pushing, cussing and a couple of nasty mails (I even wrote once that their officers were incompetent!!), the connection was transferred in the first week of March and a confirmation sent to me a week later. At this juncture I was also assured that my Caution Deposit will be refunded to me in 30 Days time.
As the refund was not made within the promised timeframe, I wrote to the same people asking for a status. When there was no response, I escalated to Customer Service who were of no help either. I then had a couple of interactions through email with the Nodal officer who dropped the bomb on me saying that the deposit was adjusted against my last bill and whatever was left was transferred to my employer's credit. But a verification with my employer revealed that they had not received any credit nor had they received any bill after the transfer. I then demanded a detailed account statement and to my horror I found that the duplicate payment of Dec 08 was not reflected at all. Even worse the statement showed some refunds which I never received!!!. The statement also showed that I owe them a final sum of around Rs.100 while in reality they should have refunded close to Rs.1200 to my employer as well as the Deposit of Rs.250 to me. I wrote to the Nodal officer again pointing to all this, who curtly responded that the refunds had been made.
Since more than 3 months had already passed and I was frustrated to the core, I started preparing documents to be sent to the Appellate Authority. However as a last ditch effort my employer coordinator wanted a final discussion with the provider as new people had come into the picture. However I and my colleague got a surprise on 6th July when my phone was disconnected without any notice (Service contract clearly states that a 48 hr notice has to be given in writing for corporate connections before disconnection). This resulted in a flare up and the provider's people concerned had no go but to meet me in person. After two 30 minute meetings wherein I showed them all records of my case, they have agreed to make the refunds - Rs.250/- will be given as a credit to my wifey's number with the same provider. My employer will receive the outstanding credit as on day of closure. And we are keeping up pressure on them to tend a written apology for the disconnection incident threatening them to switch all connections to an alternate provider otherwise!!

[cnaganathan]

I was promised the refund of INR 250 on 16 July - done on 17 July after a nasty reminder.

Outstanding Credit will be made latest by 23 Jul to my wife's number.

Apology letter will be delivered a week after that.

[sabsubs]

Hi, even I faced the same issue with Airtel Bangalore. Even though I didn’t download any game, I got an sms from them stating that I was charged 100 Rs for downloading a game. I was upset because I downloaded anything on my mobile. So I called up the customer support and enquired, but got a similar kind of response from them. I did not follow it as I was busy with my late night office work but now when I went through your post I got disturbed that I was ripped off 100 rs. The service providers rip us off most of the times. It is a bad tactic employed by the service providers.

[blacmagic]

all this talk about the service provider being "in the dark" or "clueless" is simply tripe.
do you seriously think they setup multimillion dollar operations and leave out something fundamental like the ability to monitor their networks? packets of data are sent and received in a request - response fashion. the client asks for a packet and the server sends it. the client acknowledges receipt of a packet and the server sends the next packet. its not like the client asks for a bunch of data and the server simply farts it out expecting the client to get it all or go to hell. each and every last bit of every transaction is stored somewhere. when the provider wants to bill you, it can miraculously dig up all needed information but when the time comes for roles to be reversed, the provider begins to feign ignorance and ask for the benefit of doubt.

a few years back when I was in Pune, there was this rumor that if we changed an SMS setting to route messages through a particular number, we could send free SMSes anywhere. it was actually true and we had a whale of a time messaging for free! however, a week later, Airtel [or was it Idea?] got wise and retroactively billed everybody who exploited this loophole. the users were charged proportional to their usage but above the regular rate [as a penalty]. do the companies still expect us to believe that they have no knowledge of how their networks are being used?