Name of Complainant	Aparna valathati
Date of Complaint	October 15, 2021
Name(s) of companies complained against	Airtel
Category of complaint	Mobile Phone
Permanent link of complaint	Right click to copy link
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I travelled to the United States of America on a personal visit on 8th Feb 2021. I have been staying at my relatives house and was using Wifi to access the internet on my mobile during my stay in the USA. On August 2nd , I had some personal work for which I needed to step out of my house and I needed the International roaming service for a day, I sent an email to 121 and I got the response that I can activate the International roaming via the roaming service packs depending on the required usage. I activated a one day International roaming pack on Aug 2nd and was expecting that service to be discontinued after Aug 03rd. But from Aug 03rd I have started getting the messages that One day Roaming pack is being activated for every day. I have called the airtel customer care to ask why I am getting these messages and asked them to deactivate the roaming on my mobile and just bring it back to the same level as it was before Aug 02nd as I don’t need data usage on my mobile as I have Internet at my home and use Wifi to access anything on my mobile. Customer care executives said there is nothing active and it’s set back to the same level as of Aug 2nd and they asked us to ignore any messages. Even then I was concerned about these messages and called 121 customer care multiple times in between and the other executives said the same thing. Later, I was shocked to see such a huge bill for Rs 11958.00 and I called customer care to enquire why I have got this amount as you guys said there was no roaming active. They didn’t have any answers, they started making assumptions that you might’ve used data on the mobile, I asked when nothing is active how could I use it. I have asked again to deactivate any roaming service but even after calling multiple customer care representatives, no one was able to resolve the issue. I eventually called +919910099100 , airtel international roaming assistance number, and one of the executives checked and deactivated the data roaming service on my mobile and brought it back to the same state as it was before 02nd August.

Coming to the complaints I have been raising for this issue, I have raised multiple requests 31-3705517804742, 31-3718169226285, 31-3737029643584 about the billing and they are closed without resolution. I have sent multiple emails to appellate, no response received. I am sending this final email before I escalate this to AIRTELCARES Twitter account and TRAI.

Points to be noted:

Airtel customer care executives lack knowledge on what needs to be checked when a customer complains about an issue. I really don’t understand how come they don’t have access to the minimum basic details of a service.
Airtel Customer care executives lack the authority to resolve or escalate an issue.
Airtel Customer care executives negligent and uncooperative behavior with the clients to not understand their problem and closing the service requests without proper consent from the customer.
Airtel customer care’s lack of coordination and information across different areas of support system. This is a huge gap as 121 executives are not able to direct the customer to the right team and their lack of knowledge has wasted a lot of my valuable time and caused me mental stress and agony.
Even though I have been using airtel for the past 14 years, this specific incident from Airtel is making me consider switching to a different service provider for such a pathetic customer care service airtel is.
If Airtel customer care was able to deactivate the roaming service on Aug 29th, why wasn’t it done when I called them immediately after Aug 04th when I had first called them about these activation messages I was receiving? I have called them multiple times about these and no one could think about the root cause of this.
This huge bill I have received is only due to the fact that airtel failed to deactivate a service which I have requested them to deactivate by calling them multiple times and I am not going to pay for the mistake of airtel. Airtel can’t force a customer to pay for the service they have not agreed to use. There are proofs of the call records when I called the customer care to deactivate it and bring my account to the same state as Aug 02nd.

Now they have disconnected my service and I am unable to process my financial transactions due to the OTP being generated to my mobile number.

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