My Disastrous Experience with Airtel's Support

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This is going to a long post than usual: Read till the end.

I have been trying to get static IP activated since last 15 days but the engineer getting assigned is not picking up calls nor responding. Today I called up their "dedicated relationship team" and after a lost of pestering, they spoke to the assigned engineer. He visited my house today at 2:30 pm.

My ONT was in bridge mode(WiFi disabled) so I asked him to first make changes in the ONT to which he was clueless. I connected a Lan cable to my windows laptop to the ONT and logged in. Now here's something to note, my personal router and ONT are placed in a cramped space in the lobby so that range is good throughout the house. Since the yellow patch cord(which is directly spliced to the white cable coming from the duct) from the white face plate was short, I asked him to take the ONT off the router stand which is mounted on the wall and place it on the table. I logged into the ONT and created a new WAN profile and asked him for the IP, subnet and gateway. As expected, internet didn't work in the first place, I asked him to check if the details are correct.

After doing basic troubleshooting, I was pretty sure that there's something wrong with the IP details because internet didn't work. He insisted on resetting the ONT once to which I was a little hesitant because it made no sense. He proceeded to hard reset it then. Now here's where the actual problem begins.
After resetting the ONT, it rolled back to a previous firmware and we simply couldn't edit any WAN profile details(all options were greyed out). I tried the inspect element thing and tried to delete the disabled="disabled" tag but it didn't work.

Then the engineer guy called up his Tech Lead and explained the issue. After a lot of unnecessary arguments, he somehow called the DSL NOC guy and asked him to configure the ONT remotely. It was almost 5 pm by this time and I was exhausted, anyways.

The IP details given by the engineer were different from the IP details given by the DSL NOC guy, not even the same IP pool. Since the router was now "locked" because of firmware degradation, I asked the engineer to inform NOC guy to set up LAN4 into bridge mode. At this point, even PPPoE link was down, basically internet completely stopped working. After an hour of troubleshooting from the NOC, internet didn't work. Then the engineer asked NOC if he should replace the ONT with another one, to which he said that there's nothing wrong with the ONT. He asked the engineer to hard reset the router once. As expected, it didn't work. It was almost 6 pm at this point and I started to lose patience because it was almost 4 hours since the engineer arrived.

The engineer was pushing on replacing the ONT to which the NOC agreed in the end because he was unable to configure the router remotely and engineer was completely clueless about these things. At this point I was just praying that internet should at least work otherwise I'd lose my mind.
Now here comes the main part of the story. When the engineer was trying to replace the ONT with a new one, he accidentally broke the fiber cable from the splice inside the white face plate. I was like WTF!!!

He called up his manager and informed about the issue. Soon after that he left saying that he will come back shortly with the splicing machine. I had no other option but to trust him. I kept waiting for 1 hour, then I tried to call him, surprise surprise, he didn't pick any of my calls. It was 8 pm at this point. I gave up because I was super exhausted.
So now my connection is down with a broken fiber cable and that stupid ONT lying on my table.

Accha khasa chalta hua internet bhi band karke chala gaya engineer.

To be honest I feel helpless and cheated at this point. Airtel's support and customer care is into shambles now. So much drama for configuring a simple static IP, which was not even that complicated in the first place.

I felt no point in complaining and talking to their lame and stupid customer care at 121. I just gave up completely because I had no energy left.

It would take another 2-3 days to fix this broken patch of cable according to my speculation based on past experiences.
There's no point in trying to escalate this issue with their nodal office or appellate because all they do is ignore my emails.

I'd look out for another ISP now and go for a disconnection after this incident. Yes it may seem a bit bone headed decision but I simply don't want to deal with all these things, I have too much going on at work and personal life. I don't care about those complimentary OTT subscriptions or vfm black services. It's not about money anymore.

This is totally unacceptable but there's nothing I can do apart from waiting for the fiber cable to get patched.
 
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for me it was fairly simple, tech guy just came in and asked someone else to configure static ip remotely.

do you mean the yellow fiber patch cable? cuz airtel techs ive seen usually carry spares.
 
@imdarkray no man, this is not on me. Static IP activation is a fairly simple process, it's airtel's incompetent support who messed up my internet in the process.
@JB701 yellow patch cable was directly attached to the main wire inside the face plate and it broke. Engineer didn't have the splicing machine.
 
Any failed fulfillment for a service provided by a provider commercially should not be on the customer.
It's not like, @rajat_ is asking for an extra free service. He is paying for it and should be handled by every provider the same.

The speed boost and this mess is on no one but Airtel and their incompetence.
 
It has been my observation that when we modify the router overriding its preset config e.g. Bridge mode, unlocked router etc etc, Airtel engineers are unable to work with it and they tend to either reset it or replace it.

This is because even Airtel enggs do not know the settings. They are pushed from the backend. I see it & experience it again and again that most of the junta is incompetent. Only a few people are really knowledgeable. Others are just doing brick-work.

When I unlocked my F670L, I lost VOIP. The call was open for several days and no engg could solve it. I was only missing one setting, but engg had no clue what it is. They simply replaced it and pushed the setting from the backend.
 
wow
this was unexpected.
I got my static IP installed on 4th of September which I opted for on 1st of september. My sercomm AOT-4221SR was running on fw R3.9, the team leader helped remotely setup the static ip into the router. ONT was locked as expected after the update but he downgraded the firmware to R3.2 and the WAN settings were unlocked.
That was quite generous of him, the entire process hardly took 15 min and connection was good to go.
Although the engineers are completely clueless that static ip needs to be setup in the ONT itself rather than assigning it to my own devices.

Also if you're planning on changing the ISP, go with Jio Fiber.
I used it for 1.5 years and connection went down twice in 1.5years for some maintainence and that too at night from 1am to 3am and other one went upto 5am, rest absolutely no disconnections or issues at all. I had to shift my place and unfortunately there's no jio fiber coverage in my area that's why had to go with airtel but airtel is bad tbh.
 
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Been doing that daily. Finally had to ask them to just get the dynamic IP internet working for now.
For static IP they are still not sure when it can get resolved.
 
@rajat_ I've said this multiple times earlier in other posts..don't engage with Airtel Support. And if you do, it's at your risk. I am serious. These guys are hopeless. Oh, what a drop in standards in less than 2 years. Regrettable.
 
@Chip If I had any idea my internet would stop working because of all the mess engineer made, I would have cancelled the static IP order. An SR of internet not working has been generated automatically but I don't have any hopes of getting it resolved anytime soon.

Airtel Black is a trap. I seriously regret my decision of falling for it. Airtel knows how to trap customers with their lucrative schemes. If I opt for disconnection, I'd lose Amazon Prime and Hotstar membership, would have to find another decent ISP and argue with their stupid CC regarding bill because their billing is just fu*ked up. It's just too much to deal with and even if I had the energy and time to fight, I'd have avoided like I am doing right now.

I'd have to find an alternate ISP anyways because my family is cursing me for messing up with the internet and everyone's work/entertainment is getting hampered.

Tata Play Fiber, Jio Fiber, Microscan, Hathway and Gazon One Giga Fiber(LCO) are some of the options to choose from.

Relying on a single ISP that too Airtel was a mistake and I should have opted for a backup broadband when I had the time.
 
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