| Name of Complainant | |
| Date of Complaint | August 28, 2023 |
| Name(s) of companies complained against | Airtel |
| Category of complaint | Mobile Phone |
| Permanent link of complaint | Right click to copy link |
| Share your complaint on social media for wider reach | |
      |
|
My mother who is 65+ became an Airtel Postpaid customer in April this year and the plan was changed to Postpaid from prepaid only because she was visiting Australia to meet her daughter for one year. She wanted to ensure that her Airtel number is active so that the bank OTP is received to make any important payments in India through bank transactions.
She was advised that the number is activated with postpaid with 2 months free of cost and roaming would be automatically enabled. However, this was not the case. We then called Airtel to have the roaming enabled, however there was no message or instructions on any policies, rules etc.
Any case, the number was used to make an international roaming call only once during her stay so far. However, we are shocked now with a bill of 18000 INR which jumped in a month from 899 to 18000 and the number disconnected.
When we called the customer care to explain the situation, we were on first call with a rep where she understood the situation and advised that accidental data roaming charges have been applied and she would submit a waiver. My mother would never carry her phone outside the house and at home the wi-fi is always turned on, so this was purely accidental charges without our knowledge that we are getting charged.
First customer rep advised that the charges would be waived. However, when we followed up, another rep was very rude and was not even willing to listen to our situation. We requested to speak to a supervisor and to our dismay, he was the same who was not ready to understand that this is something that has been applied in accident and persistently told us that he could see the data usage which we were completely unaware of how that could be possible.
It was frustrating to hear from supervisor on his logic that the airtel would auto-turn the data roaming if the phone would not catch wi-fi signals. This was ridiculous as there were no alerts from Airtel on literally nothing other than – bonus offers of 100 rupees , and then the bill shocker SMS. Supervisor and other rep threatened that we must pay the bill else they would assign our number to someone else.
We were on phone for almost 3 hours with different people but no positive response or even someone trying to understand the situation of how this has all been applied accidentally.
This is totally unacceptable and unethical.
We would request for urgent attention to this matter and a waiver and our phone number activated urgently as we need to pay off some important urgent bills in India and it has all stopped as we cant receive OTP.
