Airtel Digital TV DTH Reviews

[shinelagoon]

Hi all,This is me Vibhor Goyel from Noida (airtel dth customer i.d no.- 3001640031). i was living in UK from quite a long time and came back now to India for good about a few weeks back. I immediately bought the airtel dth service as i already had used their mobile and broadband services previously and was pretty much satisfied that time.I took north mega pack for 4350/- on 8/10/09 and asked the sales advisor to suggest me the procedure to take another connection on my second tv. He said me to deposit 1750/- as activation charges and then to buy some recharge value for 160/- monthly flat rate price for the second tv (multi tv). I did the same and bought a recharge value of about 1000/-. I have done all these transactions online.Well the technicians came after two days and installed the stb+ dish on both of my tv's. The dth service started working immediately. But soon i realized that a few channels were not coming on my second tv, which were supposed to come under the north mega pack. I checked my airtel account and found that they have given me the wrong tv package (economy pack) on second tv. I called to customer services and they assured me that this issue will be resolved within the next 24 hours.Nothing was done even after waiting for about 48 hours, and my agony started from that very moment. Call after call i have made since that time till today, speaking to really pathetic english speaking customer advisors. Not one or two but about seven in a row all struggling in understanding OR to made me understand what they wanna say. Explaining my case again and again from scratch to each and every one, whosoever coming on the other side. Like they don't believe at all to maintain some kind of customer notes on their system (which is a standard practice within all call centers all over world) so as to avoid any kind of customer harassment, if he/ she calls for the same issue any time in future.In the mean time while using their services i found some really serious probs, like- the stb (set top box) is so slow that it takes about 4-5 seconds every time to switch to the next channel, and on some channels even more...... so much irritating.- most of the times, a number of channels keeps on getting off and on. Message comes on screen 'you are not subscribed to this channel' . And after few hours or a day these channels starts coming automatically.- A few channels like sahara one freezes in between for about 7-8 seconds every few minutes.- The stb hangs quite frequently if i try to play any channel (which is suppose to come) but somehow if at that time its not coming. All the remote keys stop working at that moment. Even you can't switch off the stb from your remote, and finally i have to kill the stb by switching it off from power and then switching it back again. Now wait for another 3-4 minutes to let it reboot itself.- 6 out of 10 airtel live services doesn't work all the time.- most seriously what i have seen is that most of the dth service providers (incl. airtel) in India are not providing HDMI slot in their stb, which means no use of spending good money on brilliant LCD tv's when they can't even get a decent good signal out of the stb. The impact can easily be seen on a 52" like big screen LCD tv's. The picture doesn't show good detail due to the raw processing of signals through the age old composite slot in the new generation tv's. I can trace the difference easily coz I was using the virgin digital tv service in UK on my LCD with flawless video picture quality .Realizing and noticing all these faults during the initial few days after getting my new dth connection from airtel, i kept calling them everyday and explaining my situation every time to the useless customer advisors. Every-time they apologize and said sorry. Like these are the best words they have on offer, except any relevant SOLUTION.During the last 12 days or so, I have already spoken to 9 customer advisors, 4 floor supervisors (Roshni, Avinaash, Benjamin, Puneet), 1 customer retention member (sandeep), 2 technical engineers at different times. At each occasion they have booked my complaint for- wrong channel package running on my second tv (muti-tv) connection.- stb hang problem and other technical faults.Each time I have been given different complaint numbers and also the time slot, mostly the next day for engineer visit at my home.Each time i waited for the engineer to come, and on one occasion the engineer called me at some awkward time to ask if he can come now. I had no other option but to say him NO as i wasn't at home that time and he hung up the call after saying that 'no problems, i'll call you again tomorrow to re-schedule my visit'. No call he made after that. And to my surprise the next day the customer advisor told me, their system is showing that my issue has been fully resolved. Even i got the same sms on my registered mobile phone no. as well.Once again i got a call from an engineer after speaking and explaining my situation to one customer retention team member (sandeep) when i made a request for disconnection and refund. The engineer said that he is coming within the next half an hour, but again he didn't turned up. I received the same sms the next day that my issue has been fully resolved.I explained this cheat to one new floor supervisor (puneet) in the morning today, he assured me once again that the engineer will visit by tomorrow, i.e. 21/10/09 mor., but to my surprise i have again received an sms just now (at 21:00) that the issue has been fully resolved.I spoke to one new customer advisor and asked about my previously made request about a week back to discontinue with services/ refund of my full money due to lack of customer services and wrong behavior on behalf of airtel and he said that my request is still open. Also that they have got no policy to refund back the money.I don't know what to do. I am pretty much frustrated and tired now.

 

[INDIANBOY123]

Hi all,

This is me Vibhor Goyel from Noida (airtel dth customer i.d no.- 3001640031). i was living in UK from quite a long time and came back now to India for good about a few weeks back. I immediately bought the airtel dth service as i already had used their mobile and broadband services previously and was pretty much satisfied that time.

I took north mega pack for 4350/- on 8/10/09 and asked the sales advisor to suggest me the procedure to take another connection on my second tv. He said me to deposit 1750/- as activation charges and then to buy some recharge value for 160/- monthly flat rate price for the second tv (multi tv). I did the same and bought a recharge value of about 1000/-. I have done all these transactions online.

Well the technicians came after two days and installed the stb+ dish on both of my tv's. The dth service started working immediately. But soon i realized that a few channels were not coming on my second tv, which were supposed to come under the north mega pack. I checked my airtel account and found that they have given me the wrong tv package (economy pack) on second tv. I called to customer services and they assured me that this issue will be resolved within the next 24 hours.
Nothing was done even after waiting for about 48 hours, and my agony started from that very moment. Call after call i have made since that time till today, speaking to really pathetic english speaking customer advisors. Not one or two but about seven in a row all struggling in understanding OR to made me understand what they wanna say. Explaining my case again and again from scratch to each and every one, whosoever coming on the other side. Like they don't believe at all to maintain some kind of customer notes on their system (which is a standard practice within all call centers all over world) so as to avoid any kind of customer harassment, if he/ she calls for the same issue any time in future.

In the mean time while using their services i found some really serious probs, like

- the stb (set top box) is so slow that it takes about 4-5 seconds every time to switch to the next channel, and on some channels even more...... so much irritating.
- most of the times, a number of channels keeps on getting off and on. Message comes on screen 'you are not subscribed to this channel' . And after few hours or a day these channels starts coming automatically.
- A few channels like sahara one freezes in between for about 7-8 seconds every few minutes.
- The stb hangs quite frequently if i try to play any channel (which is suppose to come) but somehow if at that time its not coming. All the remote keys stop working at that moment. Even you can't switch off the stb from your remote, and finally i have to kill the stb by switching it off from power and then switching it back again. Now wait for another 3-4 minutes to let it reboot itself.
- 6 out of 10 airtel live services doesn't work all the time.
- most seriously what i have seen is that most of the dth service providers (incl. airtel) in India are not providing HDMI slot in their stb, which means no use of spending good money on brilliant LCD tv's when they can't even get a decent good signal out of the stb. The impact can easily be seen on a 52" like big screen LCD tv's. The picture doesn't show good detail due to the raw processing of signals through the age old composite slot in the new generation tv's. I can trace the difference easily coz I was using the virgin digital tv service in UK on my LCD with flawless video picture quality .

Realizing and noticing all these faults during the initial few days after getting my new dth connection from airtel, i kept calling them everyday and explaining my situation every time to the useless customer advisors. Every-time they apologize and said sorry. Like these are the best words they have on offer, except any relevant SOLUTION.

During the last 12 days or so, I have already spoken to 9 customer advisors, 4 floor supervisors (Roshni, Avinaash, Benjamin, Puneet), 1 customer retention member (sandeep), 2 technical engineers at different times. At each occasion they have booked my complaint for
- wrong channel package running on my second tv (muti-tv) connection.
- stb hang problem and other technical faults.

Each time I have been given different complaint numbers and also the time slot, mostly the next day for engineer visit at my home.
Each time i waited for the engineer to come, and on one occasion the engineer called me at some awkward time to ask if he can come now. I had no other option but to say him NO as i wasn't at home that time and he hung up the call after saying that 'no problems, i'll call you again tomorrow to re-schedule my visit'. No call he made after that. And to my surprise the next day the customer advisor told me, their system is showing that my issue has been fully resolved. Even i got the same sms on my registered mobile phone no. as well.

Once again i got a call from an engineer after speaking and explaining my situation to one customer retention team member (sandeep) when i made a request for disconnection and refund. The engineer said that he is coming within the next half an hour, but again he didn't turned up. I received the same sms the next day that my issue has been fully resolved.

I explained this cheat to one new floor supervisor (puneet) in the morning today, he assured me once again that the engineer will visit by tomorrow, i.e. 21/10/09 mor., but to my surprise i have again received an sms just now (at 21:00) that the issue has been fully resolved.

I spoke to one new customer advisor and asked about my previously made request about a week back to discontinue with services/ refund of my full money due to lack of customer services and wrong behavior on behalf of airtel and he said that my request is still open. Also that they have got no policy to refund back the money.

I don't know what to do. I am pretty much frustrated and tired now.

r a yaar tera to lagaya tha set top box maine jab apply kiya tha jan09 ko ajj tak nehi aaya .100-200 bar ph kiya tha leken kuch nehi hua ..
cheater airtel ..

btw mein free mein paya tha samsung lcd tv ke saatth.

 

[sundarraju]

Hi All,I have been visiting this forum as a guest for a very long time and now got a chance put in my views which will truly reflect effectiveness of Airtel Digital Tv Customer Support.My cousin purchased ADTV and got it installed a month ago - I happened to visit him last week and fiddling with the settings of the brand new samsung 32" LCD tv which was hooked up to the ADTV. For some strange reason I felt that the quality is not upto the mark and checked the Signal Strength (40-60) and Signal quality was hovering between 20 -30 every second (BTW I have been using Tata Sky for years and both the values were at 100 all the times).I am using Airtel Broadband and Mobiles for a long time with no issues the reason being there was no reason for contacting the customer support all these days.I called the ADTV customer care and got disconnected 3 times in a row after the phone rang two times (I manage customer support for an MNC and know how things work) - finally got hold of a guy who registered the complaint and promised site visit by Airtel Engineer the next day morning 9:00 am and told me that he will give a call 30 mins prior to that.I gave my phone number as alternate contact just in case if they were not able to reach my cousin.Nothing happened till 7:00 PM - made another call and able to reach a tech in the 3rd attempt - I gave my feedback about disconnections and asked for an update of the complaint which is as follows "The Engineer was unable to locate the address (at which they installed the service a month ago) and the primary contact phone was switched off" which is not the fact. In any case, I asked him why was I not called ? and the reply was "Engineer will not be able to see the secondary contact number". He rescheduled the site visit next day morning same time and promised it will be resolved the same day.Nothing happened the next day - called the customer care at 11:00 AM and the response from the agent was ridiculous "Our systems are getting upgraded - please call us after 30 mins if your issue is not resolved".Waited till 7:00 in the evening and called them again, got hold of a guy who really don't know what he is talking about - I lost my temper and politely asked for his supervisor who calmly listened to all of my attempts to resolve a simple issue and said "your issue has to be resolved by 3:30 PM tomorrow and some one will get in touch with you" and he had no answer for my question "Why was I not called ?" - but promised that someone will visit the next day and give a call prior to coming. I reconfirmed that my number is updated there and visible to the technician.As expected nothing happened as of now 11:46 PM which prompted me to register and express the painful experience I have undergone in the last few days.Comparatively, when my tata sky dish was damaged got it fixed in less than 10 hours with one phone call. In fact I was under the impression that Airtel have an edge over TataSky in terms of technology as well customer care, but this instance proved me that is totally wrong and saved me from switching over to Airtel.Now I leave it to the forum members to judge the support levels provided by both the Service Providers.Finally "If looks can kill - definitely that will be Airtel"Regards,Sundar

 

[Sushubh]

actually airtel dth customer support is nowhere near their support for mobile and broadband services. that is a well established fact on this forum.

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we used to recommend airtel based on their customer support for broadband services. but apparently it is a totally different division managed by apparently incompetent people.

 

[clanx]

@ sundarraju ,I am also one of the miserable cutomer's of ADTV. The Airtel CC is just ridiculous and they are a bunch of people who dosen't know anything. After getting frustrated, i contacted them via Mail and no use(Regrading plan changes). I wrote 3 mails to which only a single agent resoponded with the same answersTheir standard script goes like this*****************************Dear Mr.X,Thank you for writing to us at Airtel digital TV.This is with reference to your mail regarding x issue.Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience faced by you.2 lines of shit depending upon your problem(We would like to inform you that your complaint has been forwarded to the concern department for the issue that you are facing. The complaint number for the same is xxxxxxx.The concern department would contact you accordingly.)It is our privilege to have you as our valued customer & we look forward to a long and fruitful association with you.Regards,I don't know anything,Don't contact me again.Airtel digital TV.***************This was the same response, I received all the 3 times. In fact the third time, I wrote a long page explaining about my problems and needed a explanation about this lame response from either their supervisor or manager. I got got is the same bull shit response. Generated complaint and forwarded it. In fact, I mentioned in that mail not to generate any complaint and I need explanations and simple questions "Yes or No"I am going to forward these mails ti their Nodal officers whose email addresses are mentioned in their website. I am also going to file a official complaint in Consumer's forum.Do any of you guys know how to obtain a refund, Is it possible? Guyzz,,I need your help here...

 

[shinelagoon]

No use to write to the Nodal Officer, I have already tried that. What they do is, they always gonna send you a standard format reply which says:

'Dear Customer,

Thank you for writing to Airtel.

This is with reference to your email dated 24 October 2009 regarding Airtel .

We regret the inconvenience caused and would like to inform you that we look after the concerns regarding Airtel mobile. Further, would request you to please resend your issue at [email protected] .


We hope this information helps.


Warm regards

Ashutosh Sharma
Nodal Officer'

So you see, they are brilliant at all of their working stages.... BOGUS. The only way out i guess is to go to consumer court. Now how good is the consumer court system in this country, that's another big question.

 

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[dantool]

I'd quite a good experience today with airtel cc.as i switched on my tv today at 1.30 pm i got screen notifying signal loss.called up cc at 2 pm.told them to send someone asap.was told that engineer wud come to my premises before 5 pm.to my surprise he reached at 2.40 pm

 

[karthikjr73]

First off, thank you for your review of the entire airtel dth package. i am seriously considering an airtel dth since my present cable operator is acting very funny and bossy with me. i cannot go for a Tata Sky since it does not have DTH with HD & DVR. also i called the tatasky CC and the dudette there mentioned that i could subscribe for tatasky now and they will give me preference when they launch their STB with HD & DVR. but when that will come, even god does not know. as regards your comment about mother's maiden name, the funda is that most people who you know or know you definitely know your father's name but very rarely know your mother's name and especially her maiden name. that is an additional security that most operators use. infact some even want you to enter mother's birth date because indian ladies are very conservative and their birth details are only known to the family members.

 

[nvshaji]

Airtel Digital TV customer service sucks big time .. This is what I wrote to them ..I have been a long customer of Airtel, including an unlimited blackberryconnection and 3G internet broadband connection. (Mobile number9901xxxx36). Recently I had taken the Airtel Digital HD TV connection(customer id 3007066435). From day one the digital TV quality was poorfrom Airtel, and I later found that the Signal Quality is coming to amere 40% whereas the expected one from an HD connection should be around100% (at least for other digital tv connections). I spoke to thecustomer care of Airtel Digital TV and the guy who took the call had noidea and he said he will send a person to my home. The person came anddeclared that the problem was with the LCD TV and not with the picturequality and I could get only that quality from LCD tv. He also declaredthat 40% is the quality you should expect from an HD box and normal boxwill be better around 60%. He promptly asked me for the happy code and Idid not know that he was going to close the call. He first said he willspeak to the MDU person at Ajmera Infinity and resolve the issue, butafter that he never turned up. I raised a call again to the customercare two days back, and no one turned up in the last two days. I thencalled up today again, to my shock, I came to know that the person hadclosed the call as he could not reach me. I have an airtel mobileconnection and the signal quality is very bad at my office(which is on abusy IT corridor in outer Ring Road in Bangalore). I had raised a callfor that, that is still outstanding. I had asked Mr. Sandeep Sharma whotook my call to transfer my call to the supervisor and he said he cannottransfer at this time and I should call back in an hour. The first thingI am going to do tomorrow is to go and switch my mobile connection fromAirtel to Vodafone (thanks to TRAI for number portability) and get morepeople from my office also follow the same suit. I am extremely fed upwith Airtel, had an excellent Dish TV connection for past three yearsand was forced to take Airtel as the apartment complex has only optionof Airtel. I will influence my builder to switch to other Dishconnection as soon as possible. You just do not want a digital tvconnection which has a quality which prompts my visitors to ask if thatwas a cable - and that too worse than a cable.

 

[amish]

I found a new feature just today (applicable for recorder). I am not sure if others know of it.Or I am not sure if they added this feature just recently.You can now book a recording via internet. i.e. no need to go to TV room to book a recording.Just login to your airtel live account.. go to program guide and then there u can select channels/program and click on record button.