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Airtel Broadband Fair Usage Policy
- Thread starter igod
- Start date
- Replies 2,009
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Here's the Fair Usage Policy scoop first: Airtel recently changed it's billing cycle, from the like 23rd to 24th (not sure) to 10th to 11th of the month -atleast in Delhi. Now they also have a software running called VPA or something which is responsible for throttling your speeds once you reach your Fair Usage Policy limit. Now this software is supposed to reset your speeds to your plan speeds at the beginning of the billing cycle that is if you have been throttled as per Fair Usage Policy already.
Now the problem is that their VPA software is still running on the old billing cycle whereas the customers are expecting their speeds to get normal as per the new billing cycle. The result - pretty much a meltdown happening at Airtel call centers right now.
All of this is something I learnt in the last 60 mins of agonising and plain BP-raising 5 phone calls to the customer care department speaking to 6 different people all giving me weird answers till one of the tech team people gave me the answer above which made some sense. Not to mention I was put on hold for 10 mins and hung up on - 3 times!
Background of the story - you gotta hang on here, the story might be a bit long:
I became an Airtel customer back in March 2010 when they didn't have clearly called out Fair Usage Policy limits - I got myself the 512k day/1 Mbps night plan. After a couple of months they introduced Fair Usage Policy throttling which I noticed with a reduction in speed, and in my case it was after reaching 100GB a month. The limit was also confirmed with someone from customer care at that time. Also, at some point in Oct/Nov - they made my plan 1 Mbps full day with no change in Fair Usage Policy or prices - atleast I wasn't told of Fair Usage Policy limits but this is where it get's murkier and more rotten - read on.
In October 2010, I noticed that I was being throttled much earlier in the month. So I called up customer care and complained because they told me my limit is still at 100 GB. I logged a ticket and their new local "good-for-nothing-ticket-bounty-hunters" called me and said that this is because I have reached my download limit of 25 GB. I said CC told me 100 and u tell me 25 - I want to believe CC. They gave me the mobile number of a senior person Mr Mehta (PM me for full name and mobile no.) as a senior CC person and they asked me to check with him. He said that Airtel has 2-3 diff software that their diff departments look at and they have diff Fair Usage Policy in diff software for me. But he also said that my Fair Usage Policy limit is 100 GB. By this time I reached the beginning of the next billing cycle and the speeds were reset and I said I will get this checked again when I reach the cap.
Now come December, my speed was cut to half as soon as I hit 25GB. By now this is another stress factor in my life which I have to manage like my job, my health, my investments etc
So I know the drill - I call up CC to ask a simple question "What is my Fair Usage Policy limit and what will happen if I reach this limit?". Now on purpose I made a diff call to the CC 3 diff days to ask the same question because I knew with experience that the answer everytime is going to be different - and it was. One version was that my speed would get reduced to 512kbps (but no further reduction even if I hit 200GB) and the other version was that my speed would get reduced to 256kbps - all from the same CC department. What I observed in my speed however was this: after 25GB, I was reduced to 512kbps and now for the last 3-4 days, my speed has reduced to 256 kbps - possibly because I hit another speed limit or something.
Now before I go ahead, here is my definition of the term "fact": A fact is a piece of information that you believe is true because either you have experienced it yourself or it has been validated by certain rules or people that you believe in. For example - if I come across a ghost tomorrow, I would say ghosts are real - even if people call me crazy - because this is something I have experienced and I trust my senses. Similarly, water is H2O because my belief in science and it's rules makes me agree to it.
Now the above were facts and I have the complaint numbers and names of people saved to prove it, here is my opinion which by the way have turned very real facts for me:
- Airtel customer care has gone to the dogs - my recent experiences with them make me believe that they are one of the bottom 5 quality of CC in my whole life of experiencing customer care in everywhere I have lived in the world - UK, US, Singapore and Dubai
[*]Their Fair Usage Policy as an idea was a disaster against everything that the India growth story has to offer, it's execution was an even worse disastor, cataclysmic for me and this would scar their brand for a long time to come
[*]They simply DO NOT care about their customers - not a single CC or "Senior" person I spoke to was even remotely interested in solving my problems instead sending me to departments after departments to just rid their hands of any problem
[*]Airtel des not care about your contractual terms with them - What we call a plan is basically a contract I entered into with Airtel. Airtel changed the terms of this contract without even a formal notification to me leaving me to find out myself when I start seeing a degradation in quality that I was not expecting to see. They did this because they have a line in the contract - something like "Airtel reserves the right to change it's plans blah blah". This is written to protect and not to abuse - rarely is this line used as a practice and Airtel is abusing this blatantly and without any regrets in an almost peadophilic way. Airtel: might I remind you as a business person - there are the words of a contract and there is a spirit of the contract. The trust goes away as soon as the spirit of the contract goes away - Business 101 motherfu**ers!
[*]Airtel is completely out of tune with the demands of internet usage of current times - they think a 25GB cap is required for a 4Mbps connection in today's world of streaming FU*KING LEGAL HD content available all around the web - both paid and free - YouTube HD, TED HD - install Miro and your list is endless. Sorry I had to shout out the curse words there because I am genuinely sick and at times nauseated of Airtel treating us all like pirates just because we can reap the promise of the internet to it's full free collaborative glory born on the principles of sharing and bringing the whole world to the same level in terms of availability of content - from Minnesota to Mogadishu!
[/list]
I had to write this to share (and vent) my frustration with a community who is also going through hell like this every day dealing with Airtel. Some of us are geeks and we ask questions to demand what we rightfully believe is ours - because Airtel and the trust led us to believe so.
For people who are not on the Airtel Broadband yet - I very sincerely and strongly urge you to read the above in full and then make a conscious decision about your broadband provider. After all, in such cases we have to believe that we vote with our wallets - so choose wisely who gets your vote.
If people have similar experiences with Airtel, I urge you to write in detail on this forum.
About the sad ending - I am working on it including the number portability of my Airtel mobile to another provider so I can remove Airtel from my life.
Similar thing happend with me too and I am going to really dump Airtel for good.
Any suggestions for unlimited plans in south delhi .. mtnl / spectranet / reliance
Now the problem is that their VPA software is still running on the old billing cycle whereas the customers are expecting their speeds to get normal as per the new billing cycle. The result - pretty much a meltdown happening at Airtel call centers right now.
All of this is something I learnt in the last 60 mins of agonising and plain BP-raising 5 phone calls to the customer care department speaking to 6 different people all giving me weird answers till one of the tech team people gave me the answer above which made some sense. Not to mention I was put on hold for 10 mins and hung up on - 3 times!
Background of the story - you gotta hang on here, the story might be a bit long:
I became an Airtel customer back in March 2010 when they didn't have clearly called out Fair Usage Policy limits - I got myself the 512k day/1 Mbps night plan. After a couple of months they introduced Fair Usage Policy throttling which I noticed with a reduction in speed, and in my case it was after reaching 100GB a month. The limit was also confirmed with someone from customer care at that time. Also, at some point in Oct/Nov - they made my plan 1 Mbps full day with no change in Fair Usage Policy or prices - atleast I wasn't told of Fair Usage Policy limits but this is where it get's murkier and more rotten - read on.
In October 2010, I noticed that I was being throttled much earlier in the month. So I called up customer care and complained because they told me my limit is still at 100 GB. I logged a ticket and their new local "good-for-nothing-ticket-bounty-hunters" called me and said that this is because I have reached my download limit of 25 GB. I said CC told me 100 and u tell me 25 - I want to believe CC. They gave me the mobile number of a senior person Mr Mehta (PM me for full name and mobile no.) as a senior CC person and they asked me to check with him. He said that Airtel has 2-3 diff software that their diff departments look at and they have diff Fair Usage Policy in diff software for me. But he also said that my Fair Usage Policy limit is 100 GB. By this time I reached the beginning of the next billing cycle and the speeds were reset and I said I will get this checked again when I reach the cap.
Now come December, my speed was cut to half as soon as I hit 25GB. By now this is another stress factor in my life which I have to manage like my job, my health, my investments etc
So I know the drill - I call up CC to ask a simple question "What is my Fair Usage Policy limit and what will happen if I reach this limit?". Now on purpose I made a diff call to the CC 3 diff days to ask the same question because I knew with experience that the answer everytime is going to be different - and it was. One version was that my speed would get reduced to 512kbps (but no further reduction even if I hit 200GB) and the other version was that my speed would get reduced to 256kbps - all from the same CC department. What I observed in my speed however was this: after 25GB, I was reduced to 512kbps and now for the last 3-4 days, my speed has reduced to 256 kbps - possibly because I hit another speed limit or something.Now before I go ahead, here is my definition of the term "fact": A fact is a piece of information that you believe is true because either you have experienced it yourself or it has been validated by certain rules or people that you believe in. For example - if I come across a ghost tomorrow, I would say ghosts are real - even if people call me crazy - because this is something I have experienced and I trust my senses. Similarly, water is H2O because my belief in science and it's rules makes me agree to it.
Now the above were facts and I have the complaint numbers and names of people saved to prove it, here is my opinion which by the way have turned very real facts for me:
- Airtel customer care has gone to the dogs - my recent experiences with them make me believe that they are one of the bottom 5 quality of CC in my whole life of experiencing customer care in everywhere I have lived in the world - UK, US, Singapore and Dubai
[*]Their Fair Usage Policy as an idea was a disaster against everything that the India growth story has to offer, it's execution was an even worse disastor, cataclysmic for me and this would scar their brand for a long time to come
[*]They simply DO NOT care about their customers - not a single CC or "Senior" person I spoke to was even remotely interested in solving my problems instead sending me to departments after departments to just rid their hands of any problem
[*]Airtel des not care about your contractual terms with them - What we call a plan is basically a contract I entered into with Airtel. Airtel changed the terms of this contract without even a formal notification to me leaving me to find out myself when I start seeing a degradation in quality that I was not expecting to see. They did this because they have a line in the contract - something like "Airtel reserves the right to change it's plans blah blah". This is written to protect and not to abuse - rarely is this line used as a practice and Airtel is abusing this blatantly and without any regrets in an almost peadophilic way. Airtel: might I remind you as a business person - there are the words of a contract and there is a spirit of the contract. The trust goes away as soon as the spirit of the contract goes away - Business 101 motherfu**ers!
[*]Airtel is completely out of tune with the demands of internet usage of current times - they think a 25GB cap is required for a 4Mbps connection in today's world of streaming FU*KING LEGAL HD content available all around the web - both paid and free - YouTube HD, TED HD - install Miro and your list is endless. Sorry I had to shout out the curse words there because I am genuinely sick and at times nauseated of Airtel treating us all like pirates just because we can reap the promise of the internet to it's full free collaborative glory born on the principles of sharing and bringing the whole world to the same level in terms of availability of content - from Minnesota to Mogadishu!
[/list]
I had to write this to share (and vent) my frustration with a community who is also going through hell like this every day dealing with Airtel. Some of us are geeks and we ask questions to demand what we rightfully believe is ours - because Airtel and the trust led us to believe so.
For people who are not on the Airtel Broadband yet - I very sincerely and strongly urge you to read the above in full and then make a conscious decision about your broadband provider. After all, in such cases we have to believe that we vote with our wallets - so choose wisely who gets your vote.
If people have similar experiences with Airtel, I urge you to write in detail on this forum.
About the sad ending - I am working on it including the number portability of my Airtel mobile to another provider so I can remove Airtel from my life.
Similar thing happend with me too and I am going to really dump Airtel for good.
Any suggestions for unlimited plans in south delhi .. mtnl / spectranet / reliance
Similar thing happend with me too and I am going to really dump Airtel for good.
Any suggestions for unlimited plans in south delhi .. mtnl / spectranet / reliance
Reliance! truly unlimited!
Experts Opinion about FUP : https://broadband.forum/airtel-broadband/65362-airtel-broadband-throttling-shaping-bittorrent/6/#post456353
Any suggestions for unlimited plans in south delhi .. mtnl / spectranet / reliance
Reliance! truly unlimited!
Experts Opinion about FUP : https://broadband.forum/airtel-broadband/65362-airtel-broadband-throttling-shaping-bittorrent/6/#post456353
I called for disconnection, talked with thr retention dept for 15mins, they where just talking about thr service is so good, told them about reliance plans and they didnt said anything 
. i dont have any other ISP, so i have to live internet-less 
. Hope to see reliance coming soon in my area.
. i dont have any other ISP, so i have to live internet-less . Hope to see reliance coming soon in my area.I called for disconnection, talked with thr retention dept for 15mins, they where just talking about thr service is so good, told them about reliance plans and they didnt said anything . i dont have any other ISP, so i have to live internet-less . Hope to see reliance coming soon in my area.
Dude, You can mention ur area and ask them to cover, U should say that many customers are waiting here for a switch from airtel. They may roll out soon in your area if u request. follow this
Welcome to Reliance Communications
. i dont have any other ISP, so i have to live internet-less . Hope to see reliance coming soon in my area.Dude, You can mention ur area and ask them to cover, U should say that many customers are waiting here for a switch from airtel. They may roll out soon in your area if u request. follow this
Welcome to Reliance Communications
sid if u use the Internet a lot i would suggest that u stick wid ur current isp till reliance or something better comes along else u r gonna be offline for a while and may have to go back to ur last isp. so bear with it till something better comes along.
thanks for the suggestions guys, i will surely write to reliance about this , but i am tired of AirFAIL crap, they cant hang out for thr CC service only, Reliance has 1 mbps plan for 1099 only, thr is no plan in airtel that can beat that! I can wait for reliance or BSNL even it takes monthsssss , i will better use mobile for browsing 
, i know airtel will call again for buttering as they gave 7 days period for disconnecting.
, but i am tired of AirFAIL crap, they cant hang out for thr CC service only, Reliance has 1 mbps plan for 1099 only, thr is no plan in airtel that can beat that! I can wait for reliance or BSNL even it takes monthsssss , i will better use mobile for browsing , i know airtel will call again for buttering as they gave 7 days period for disconnecting.So it's been about 20-25 days since I dumped airtel. Today, an airtel rep. showed up at my door asking me why I disconnected airtel broadband... :wall:He mentioned the 1699 1 Mbps plan. Why the hell would I want to pay 1699 INR for FUP'ed 1 Mbps when I can get Non FUP'ed Reliance 1 Mbps for 1099 INR?! :rofl:
FINALLY will be able to get rid of the Airtel FUP plague.. :excited: