I have made 5 postings for the past two days in this forum on AIRTEL's illegal and immoral throttling of bandwidth speed on unlimited bradband subscribers. One of them is the copy of my complaint to Airtel South Nodal Officer made on 15-02-2009.
Probably in response to it, or, maybe, on the basis of my earlier complaint to the customer care lady phoned up to me on 16th evening. She was apologetic about the speed reduction, asserted that there is no question of limiting the use of unlimited plan customers and assured me that by 17th (i.e today) afternoon my original speed of 256 kbps would be restored. I refused to believe her but she was again and again assuring me that would be definitely done and she would herself call mer and inform me when it is done.
What do you expect? I waited till 4 p.m today. Nothing had happened. I tried customer care and a lady who answered said that she would transfer my call to the technical department, leaving me to hold the receiver waiting patiently. Nothing happened.
Again I tried customer care. This time the gent who answered repeated the same drama, with the same outcome.
So, once again I have sent a complaint the South Nodal Officer. The complaint is reproduced below:
Dear Sir,
I am forced to lodge this complaint because of the way your customercare executives and technical department seem to be taking customers as jokers to play fun with.
Probably in view of my complaint made earlier to you on Feb 15, 2009 at 3.36 pm. a lady, claiming to be from your technical department spoke to me at about 5 p.m on Feb 16th. She sounded apolegetic, assured me that there is no such thing as reducing the speed of the internet for unlimited connection users and promised that my original speed of 256 kbps will be restored latest by 17th (i.e., today) afternoon.
As it did not happen till 4 p.m I phoned up to to yoiur Customer Care at about 4.10 p.m. to find out what exactly is happening. The executive, named Vijayalaxmi, said she was transferring my call to the technical department. After holding the receiver in vain, without any one, (except the automated voice proudly announcing the facility to pay bills online) for about 5 minutes I rang up Customrter Care again at 4.20 p.m.
This time it was Ramesh who answered, but the same drama was again repeated. He also assured me of transferring the call to the technical department and I have been left to hold on to the receiver to listen to the automated voice, none from the technical department coming on the line for ten minutes or so.
So, what am I supposed to do now? All this pompous advertisement of a 24X7 Customer Care seems to be proving to be nothing but an elaborate arrangement for your bored customer care executives to take the customers for a ride and play fool with them.
AIRTEL has breached the contract with effect from 14-02-2009 in my case by reducing my internert connection speed to from 256 kbps to 128 kbps. By TRAI's directive, any speed less than 256 kbps in India is NOT Broadband.
I have now lost my trust on AIRTEL because of the shabby way I have been treated. I will pay for the broadband connection only for 19 days (from 26-01-2009 to 13-02-2009) when the speed was maintained at 256 kbps and not for the later period when it has been throttled to 128 kbps in the current billing cycle.
I have made a request for termination of the internet connection when I spoke to yoiur Customer Care executive on 14-02-2009 itself. But it is clear your personnel are simply dithering, hoping to buy time, God know why. As far as I am concerned, it is immaterial to me now when they actually are going to do so, because I am not getting broadband speed since 14-02-2009 itself.
Regards.
C. Lakshminarayanan
Now friends, who still feel kind and friendly towards AIRTEL. Are you justified?
PS: My internet speed is still around 14 Kbps (i.e., 112 kbps) only. Big frauds, these Airtel guys!
