Not only do they cheat you off your money, they do it in style. Most of the times they return your money but sometimes the  ingenious people at the nodal officer’s office come up with such stupid explanations, you feel like banging your head on the wall. Same thing happened to me.

I am on the Rs.98 per month GPRS 2G plan. All of a sudden I get a SMS that Rs.60 are now deducted from my account for 2G charges. This is ofcourse some other plan that would overlap with my Rs.98 plan. I write off a letter to the nodal officer directly since this has been happening to me for very long. Instead of helping me with the problem, the people there came up with an ingenious explanation (reproduced later for your viewing pleasure).

Basically they say I accessed internet using Airtel Live. Which is a baseless lie, I never opened Airtel Live. My phone just has APN settings which I havent modified in ages. Anyway I have decided to appeal to the apellate authority since this doesn’t make any sense. Hopefully the people at the appellate authority will have better sense than those at the nodal officer.

Thank you for writing to airtel.
This has reference to your e-mail regarding balance depletion towards GPRS for your airtel Prepaid number xxxxxxxxxxx.

There is a charge of Rs. 60/- for browsing Internet service through Airtel Live. Hence, we regret to inform you that charges are valid and waiver for the same could not be processed.
In order to avoid balance depletion, we request you to save the Mobile Office settings as default settings and delete the Airtel Live settings.

Should you require any further online assistance, you may contact our 24×7 helpline at 12118 (Chargeable at 50 paisa for 3 minutes) from any alternate airtel number. While calling from other service providers, please dial 8790912118 (Chargeable as per the respective network charges).

We hope that we have been able to assist you suitably.
Please feel free to speak to our call center executive on 121 regarding any query/ request and 198 (Toll Free) for any complaints. You can also email us at 121@in.airtel.com.
You can get in touch with the Nodal Officer with your earlier request or complaint number if it’s still unresolved. You may send an email at nodalofficer.andhra@airtel.in or you may call at 9959334865 from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM Monday to Friday. The Nodal officer will provide a resolution to your complaint in 10 days.

If you do not receive a satisfactory response from Nodal officer you may send an email at appellate.andhra@airtel.in or you may call at 9959444865 from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM Monday to Friday.

Assuring you the best of our services.
Warm Regards,
Asha J
Nodal Office
Bharti Airtel Limited

I am dividing this post into 2 parts :

1. Advertisements via phone calls – Airtel has this number 9849805941 which was calling (is still calling) me once a day and plays ads. Since I had registered for DND I contacted Airtel to stop spamming me with ads. Soon Airtel came up with an explanation that this was not a telemarketer number and hence I should complain to the Police if I want these ads to stop, can you imagine that ? They had the audacity to say they want to protect the privacy of this number who makes 1 call to me (and other numbers ? ) every day with ads.

I have also escalated this matter to the nodal officer who is also yet to get back to me, even more suspicious is the fact that I cannot call this number and the line says the number doesn’t exist but still I get one ad from this number everyday.

2. Service messages and Automatic Service subscription – TRAI says that all VAS services need an explicit customer approval to get activated, of course the agents sitting there who want to make Airtel some fast and unethical buck don’t seem to think so. This had happened to me twice in Delhi and twice now in Hyderabad and the modus operandi is even more brazen. After my complaint I got a call from a call center agent who said “these services are activated from back end” , wow, ofcourse he didn’t give that in writing but call record will show he said that. He also claimed his supervisor was not there when I asked to speak to him. When I asked him to tell his supervisor to call me back the supervisor magically re-appeared. Wonder if these call center people are Airtel employees or vendors.

The customer care responses to my mails on the matter are below  (extraneous stuff removed) :

Mail No. 1

With reference to your E-mail dated 08/10/2010, you have expressed concern regarding balance deduction for your Airtel mobile number <snip>.

We realize that this situation must have inconvenienced you.
We would like to inform you that Cricket Alert Service is active and there is a charge of Rs.5/-. Hence, the balance was deducted.
Deactivation of Cricket Alert Service service: 
The Cricket Alert Service has been deactivated with effect from 08/10/2010, as per your request. Confirmation message will be sent on successful deactivation.
Adjustment:
We would like to inform you that the amount of Rs. 5/- has been processed and will be credited on your account within 24 hours.

Mail No. 2 (the same service had again been activated by another agent) – During this period I was on vacation and my phone was switched off so I didn’t realize the balance deduction till I wrote them a mail :

> Thank you for writing to Airtel.
>
> With reference to your e-mail dated 17/11/2010, you have expressed concern
> regarding promotional call and message , deactivate the Value Added service
> for your Airtel mobile number <snip>.
>
> We realize that this situation must have inconvenienced you. However, we
> assure you a prompt action to solve the concern.
>
> We would like to inform you that as per our records there is a charge of Rs.
> 1.50/- deducted for the activation of Cricket Service.
>  
> We would like to inform you that the Cricket Service  has  already been
> deactivated on 03/11/2010.

I am still waiting for my Rs.1.50 refund and stoppage of these advertising calls. I am sick and tired of Airtel’s brazenness now and seriously want to switch over all my connections as soon as number portability comes over. This is also the most serious I have ever been about consumer court, totally aghast at the service dished out by Airtel to me (4-5 year old customer)

I am really angry at Airtel right now, it all started 3 weeks ago when I decided to open Airtel Live after a span of around 4 years. I saw a link for some yoga thing, thinking that it was some application for yoga I decided to check it out. On the next page I figured out it was just a way to sell photos so I quit Airtel Live then and there. The thing to remember is the page where I quit was a portal page with links to content. I had not downloaded any content, nor was info about charges relayed to me.

After about an hour I saw that Rs.10 had been deducted from my balance and I have been subscribed to ‘celebyoga’ service. Angry that I never subscribed to the service and that the charge information wasn’t relayed to me, I called up Airtel and asked them to refund my money. The CC executive refunded my money immediately. I decided to pursue the matter and asked Airtel for how the consent for the service was obtained by me. I got a stupid copy paste reply :

We would like to assure you that just like a call gets captured only after it originates from a mobile and gets connected to the called number, similarly, the download made you gets captured only if you click on the content, which is then charged accordingly.

After exchanging 4-5 mails I was fed up and stopped pursuing the matter thinking that I didn’t lose anything. The service was deactivated after 3-4 days and repeated reminders.

Incident 2:

Then on 6th April it happened again. While driving I got a message that I have subscribed to bollywood services, I am like What the Hell (atleast they should have made it Hollywood to suit my taste). The strange thing this time was that I had NOT even opened Airtel Live.

I got my money back again but Airtel still insists I clicked on the content which is preposterous since I had deleted the Airtel Live settings after incident number 1.

They say it might have happened without my consent, strange again since I never give my phone to anyone.  I got the same reply as above and they claim they have investigated the issue. (and sent the same copy paste reply). The existence of such a copy past reply actually proves that this is happening very often that they had to make a FAQ for it.

Since they refuse to accept that I never clicked on the content its really hard for them to trace the people causing this illegal activity. Hopefully it wont happen again to my phone. I can imagine some agent sitting somewhere and randomly subscribing people to services, the sad part being that some must be gullible enough not to confront Airtel on this.

Anyway I got a followup call again with the operator insisting that I had infact subscribed to their services, I gave him a piece of my mind and he promptly retreated. I have been asking them for records of taking my consent but I haven’t been able to get a proper reply.

These are the steps needed to setup your windows mobile device to receive photos/music/data files:

Step 1: In Settings click on Bluetooth, select the mode tab and switch on bluetooth and make this device visible to other devices.

Step 2: In Settings , click on Beam and check receive all incoming beams.

After you complete these 2 steps all of your bluetooth incoming beams should reach your mobile phone and you should be able to share photos, files and music with your friends and receive it from them.

But another problem, all incoming files are stored in my documents, how do you ensure that these are stored in storage card ? Answer to that next week

The HTC Dream which will be manufactured by High Tech Computer Corporation is going to be the first Android phone to be marketed and released. Android as some of you may be knowing is Google’s mobile platform. The Dream will cost $179 when purchased along with a T-Mobile plan. The good news is that HTC has a very strong base in India and might launch the phone pretty early in India at a very competitive price.

The Android platform is designed to take on the likes of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other generic and specific mobile phone OS manufacturers. However this particular phone is intended to compete head on with the Apple Iphone. The Apple Iphone has been a moderate success in the US and a complete failure in India.

The HTC Dream features a capacitive touchscreen interface, GPs, 3.1 MP camera, Accelerometer and a Qualcomm 528MHz processor. Its interesting to note we dont even know the processor used by Apple.

On the software front too, the phone is pretty good. As you can see in the video, it has built in Gmail, Youtube player. It features multiple desktops like most Linux systems and allows drag and drop for icons (How cool is that). The menu is brought up with swipes.

It also has a full QWERTY keyboard, gotta say looks pretty promising.

We have scores of emails from prospective buyers telling Apple to keep the Iphone with themselves, most cant evven think about spending >30k on a mobile device with a shitty 2 MP camera, no video recording and a 3G USP which isnt even functional yet.

Forums are full of people hitting back at the hype, people are telling Airtel agents to goto hell and stop promoting their iBoxes as iPhones. Iphone fanatics who were certain to purchase the phone have dumped it, quite frankly as they cant afford it.

So who would go for a Nokia N96, Nokia N95 instead of the Iphone ? , the smart money says anyone with a decent amount of brain and anyone who isnt a Steve Jobs obsessed fanboy.

So unless you want to show off your Iphone by pinching a photo to zoom in and zoom out, give the Iphone 3G India a HUGE miss. There is a price drop around the corner for this overpriced piece of junk. Or better, get a laptop instead.

Well you got to give it to Bharti Teleservices, they seem to have beaten Vodafone on the launch date, with Vodafone yet to announce a launch date for the Iphone, Airtel has already announced on its website that its going to launch the Iphone on the 22nd of August and pricing information will be available in due time on the site. I have already signed for the prebooking, but am yet to get any information on the launch  price etc. The only information is available on their website and nowhere else.

So called tech sites like Techtree had claimed a lot of inside sources in Vodafone about the launches (LOL !) , we never had any inside source, only followed developments on websites and hence we weren’t wrong.

It is surprising that Vodafone which had got into an agreement with Apple before Airtel wont get to have the first mover advantage for the Iphone. For the Indian Iphone fan : Exciting times ahead

In what will directly impact the sales of the Iphone 3G phones, the Indian Government today announced plans to e-auction the 3G spectrum in India. BSNL and MTNL will get the spectrum automatically by paying the highest bid price, private operators will have to bid.

International parties too can bid for a piece of the Indian 3G spectrum slice but with a catch, they will either have to get a license or invest in an existing Indian company to offer 3G services.

The non-availability of 3G services was the biggest drawback as far as the Iphone 3G’s sales in India were concerned. Vodafone and Airtel must be thanking their stars as this announcement is bound to boost both interest and demand for the new Apple Iphone 3Gs in India which is expected to be launched this month.

The 3G or 3rd Generation platform offers download speeds of 14.4 Mbits/second and upload speeds of 5.8 Mbits/sec . These speeds are much more than the present ones offered under 2G. India has a huge range of 3G phones in the market for a long time now, but the services were missing. 3G will allow services like video calling, streaming data and VoIP at a fast and hopefully economical price.

The 3G spectrum offers a much higher bandwidth which ensures faster data transfer as more channels are available and simultaneous transfer of different types of data like Voice, Video and misc. data.

Also announced in MNP or mobile number portability, so people will be able to switch networks without changing their numbers. Idea and Spice users who wish to get the Iphone may choose this route once the MNP is implemented.

The Iphone 3G is seeing an extended wait in India, Vodafone has currently given no news as to the launch date for the Iphone 3G. There are reports that Vodafone’s exact Iphone launch dates are 22-26th August 2008 , these ofcourse are unconfirmed.

Apple has also made an Iphone India seciton on its website, the site lists the Indian operators that will launch the Iphone 3G, Airtel and Vodafone. It also however has no information on the exact Iphone India launch date.

The truth is there is no telling when 3G services will be launched in India, 3G allows faster data transfer rates, video calls and other exclusive features. The iphone 3G’s main advantage is pretty useless in India and Vodafone and Airtel know that. They are relying more on Apple fanatic and fanboys to gobble up the Iphone and creating hype around the launch. Vodafone which will be the first to launch the Iphone 3G in India is doing a lousy job of promoting the Iphone, many people are not even aware that the Iphone is going to be launched, and many of those who are dont seem to know that Iphone doesnt run Symbian or Windows mobile.

Also you dont need sources in Vodafone/Airtel to predict availability. Ofcourse the Iphone will be sold out when its launched in India, when will it be launched, anywhere from August 2008 to October 2008. Airtel has a later launch date as it jumped onto the bandwagon later.

Anyway thats it for now, more Iphone 3G India related stuff soon.