Airtel Data Card

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This is a review of not just the Airtel Data Card but also of the Airtel Customer Support.

I purchased an Airtel Data Card on February 24, 2007. It cost me Rs. 4,999 plus Rs. 999 for the first month of unlimited internet access. First, I was asked to wait for a day for my sim card to get activated. I waited for three days and still no luck. I kept calling the customer service again and again and they finally activated it.

Next, I realised that the data card was still not connecting to the Internet. It is supposed to provide 244 kbps of speed while connecting to the internet, but all it provides on my laptop is 0 kbps! Even when it does get connected, it takes nearly 30 minutes to open a simple webpage and that too after I refresh it again and again.

When Airtel offered unlimited internet access what they did not tell me was that it was going to be an unlimited waste of my time because none of the webpages load.

I’ve contacted the Airtel customer support repeatedly and they have no clue why this is happening. The technicians here must be the dumbest ones Airtel has ever hired, because they spent a whole day just staring at my laptop and didn’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything - call the customer support, email them, submit a complaint, go to the service center - BUT NOTHING TILL NOW!

It’s been exactly a month since I purchased the Airtel Data Card and the Airtel Customer Support has not been able to resolve this issue yet.

If I had known about the faulty data card and the non-existent customer support that Airtel provides, I would have never gone for this data card. Incidentally, after I started getting this problem with the data card, I did a Google Search to see if anyone else was going through the same experience. And guess what, there are a lot of people who are frustrated with Airtel’s Data Card and Airtel’s Customer Support for the data card. Just check Venu’s Blog if you want to read their horror stories. (BTW, Venu also has a very good review of the Airtel Data Card on his blog - do check it out).

Reading all those stories (and some of them have been going back and forth with the customer support for nearly an year now), I don’t think Airtel plans to do anything about their faulty data cards. All they are interested in is our money. Once we pay them, they don’t care if the product they have sold works or not. And their strategy is to keep on postponing the issue till the customer gets tired of contacting them and gets so frustrated that they don’t even want their money back.

Hopefully, this review will help prospective data card buyers be aware of Airtel’s practices and not buy them. But for those like me who have been scammed by Airtel, please feel free to post your Airtel Customer Support horror stories here.

And I will keep you posted if Airtel does anything to resolve this issue (ha ha, high hopes - but I am trying to be optimistic).

Rangoo
http://www.askrangoo.com

P.S. A special thanks to Venu for his blog and his informative reviews.