[Resolved]  Airtel — Airtel PRI Rent without installation

Hi,

We applied for a Airtel PRI Line. The deal offered by the Airtel Marketing Person was Rs. 5000 Rental with 5000 Calls Free. With a EPABX With 16 Extensions free.

We applied for the line and it duly came on time, The person from Airtel said the EPABX vendor will come and install it too. which he did, When they came they said that they wanted the extensions to be terminated in a particular fashion (which was not intimated earlier). We told them to come back 4 Days later and we will have all of that checked.

Now nobody from airtel told us that their help desk / customer care no. for a PRI is 17777. We kept waiting for the Airtel people to come and fix the EPABX. This waiting was for 2.5 to 3 Months. But Airtel duly kept sending bills to us, Whenever the collection agent came to our office we showed him the status and told him that we had no money due to be paid. upon this the agent put me onto his superiors and promised me to pay the 15 days rent for the first line otherwise it would be a big problem for him and he promised to have the issue resolved within 2-3 days. Also the person Mr. Patit who had sold our connection had left the company in the meanwhile. So they contacted him too and he too promised to get it resolved. So we gave them a cheque for Rs. 3500. This is the last we heard from the airtel guys. So we had to bounce the cheque. hoping somebody would come. even then the shameless guys did not come.
Month after month this drama continued for 2 more months. But we would scold the collection agent and send him away. in the third month I told the airtel guy that I am not even interested in looking at his face and asked him to take all his stuff and go away. The collection agent felt bad and escalated it to the superior. Mr. Purushottam who took some interest and came down. He understood the issue in detail and asked for 3 days to fix the issue which he did dutifully. and after 2.5 - 3 months my PRI line began to work. Mr. Purushottam said that we needed to clear the Rs. 3500 as we had issued a cheque. (big mistake from my side). we even agreed to pay this. but we refused to pay Rs. 15K plus... rental for three months as we had not used their services and not a single call was made. They agreed to this. I told them that I will pay the Rs. 3500 a little later at the end of the month as we needed to check the line as we had been harassed for 3 Months. Now the installation was completed. Not fully but with 8 extensions only but at least we could make calls. we started to use their service and make and receive calls. Our number[protected] was given to a lot of people 3 Months back itself and as it was not working we lost Rs. 2.5 Lakhs worth of order as the customer kept trying the new number[protected].
8-9 days the outgoing calls stopped working. This frustrated me to the core. Since I lost my cell phone The phone no. of Mr. Purushottam and a few others in airtel also were lost. some 10 days later i found Mr. Purushottam number and told him that the line was not working. He then said that since we had not paid the previous bills the outgoing was cut. I was furious at this. It was made clear to airtel that we would pay the Rs. 3500 which we promised to pay (for not using their super services) at the end of the month after checking the quality of stability. Now this was almost the end of the month and our same old friendly airtel collection agent came up with a total outstanding bill in the excess of 20K. I told him "listen I am only going to pay for the outgoing calls I have made." Please give me one month of quality uninterrupted services before asking for a complete month's rent."

Airtel said that if would not pay this money they would take the equipment away and terminate the line. I asked them for a termination letter and take their epabx away and not show their face. (I did not receive this letter till date) I even wanted to lodge a complaint with the consumer court. Infact now we have receive a lawyer notice from them for the dues.

Some days later somebody from the retention team called me up to enquire the reason for discontinuing the services. They said the will resolve the issue and wave of the charges due. I said that if they wanted to start afresh they were welcome. This was the last call from anybody in airtel.

One more thing they said the rent was Rs. 5000 + taxes.
suddenly when i saw the bills I noticed they had Rs. 500-600 as additional charges which were not mentioned at sign up. EVERYBODY PLEASE MAKE NOTE OF THIS TOO.

UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE THE OTHER LAND LINE AND MOBILE ALSO OF AIRTEL AND SINCE THE NUMBERS ARE PUBLISHED EVERYWHERE I HAVE TO BE WITH THEM. OTHERWISE AFTER THE PRI EPISODE I WOULD NOT HAVE USED ANYTHING OF AIRTEL EVER AGAIN.

ARPAN
+91-[protected]
[protected]@infospacetech.com