fraud
Mr Sunil Bharti: Are You Listening? Your company (Bharti Airtel) is setting benchmarks for Poor, Horrible, Bad Customer Service & Unethical Practices
Mr Sunil Bharti, Are you listening?
In Late June 2012, I had written about my experience with a potential scam that Bharti Airtel could be running which could runs into millions.
A simple scam where they activate some 1 rupee a day service without asking for consent from the user and deduct money. An investigation & research on google threw pages after pages of such complaints. Just check for yourself using this link and see what how many horror stories there are about people being cheated by Airtel.
Anyway, I had blogged about it, tweeted the incident & even posted the same on Airtel facebook page. This is their response (or the lack of it) and the story further.
Twitter Exchange:
Their folks on twitter (either their agency or whoever is managing that account) made the right noises but then nothing happened.
Till date, no one has contacted me or reached out to me to address this. This proves that their responses on twitter are just useless facade and they have no intention of addressing the issue.
I gave them enough time and gave all the information but zilch results.!!! It’s been 2 months.
Facebook Exchange:
I had posted the same on facebook and attached is their response. Same cookie cutter promise of a response & action but nothing has happened.
No effort on Airtel part to reach out or address the issue. Only false promises and no real action.
The question is why Airtel is indulging in such unethical practices & a potential fraud of charging consumers of services which they have never asked for? Surely, so many people complaining about the same must haven’t got unnoticed by the company.
So, the real question is why is Airtel not doing something about it and addressing the core issue.
So, Mr Sunil Bharti, are you listening?
Bharti Airtel & the potential 1 rupee scam & fraud that could run into millions
I have an airtel connection and there has been several instances of ‘unwanted & unasked for’ services that have been activated on my mobile phone and 1 rupee of 2 rupees deducted without notice. This gives rise to several questions on the ethics of airtel & the potential fraud /scam that might be.
Here is an example of an SMS i received which showed an unwanted/unasked for service being activated on my mobile and 1 rupee being deducted. 
Some time later in the evening, I again get an SMS, this time for 2 rupees deducted this time around. I then call airtel where I am charged 50 paise to speak to the agent to talk about this issue.
When I talk to the agent, she tried brushing this under the carpet and said that i can cancel this if I want. She had no answer to why & how this service was started in the first place. I could clearly make out that the agent would have been getting several calls like that as she did not seem surprised at all and neither did offer any insight or intention to look into why such service was started without subscribers permission. She did not even offer regrets that this has been done and forget about offering refund and credit of the amount back.
Now below could be a very realistic situation:
This kind of a micro 1 rupee scams being played on millions of airtel subscribers and potential fraud being committed by cheating customers.
The reason I suspect this is that:
- Many people may just ignore this considering that this is just 1 rupee thing.
- Many people may stop this service and forget about this and not escalate this to airtel thinking why waste time on 1 rupee
- Many people not even coming to realize that such 1 rupee amounts are being deducted from their accounts
Anyone has idea of where this could be escalated and brought to notice for investigation.
It is really painful that a company run by Mr Sunil Mittal, who espouses to be the torch bearer of corporate ethics operates in this manner of cheating the customer — however the small the amount maybe. to notice. Anyone else facing such issues?
This is a breach of trust and trust once lost in a brand, by such behavior, is lost forever.
EDIT: A quick Google Search on this subject showed that this is indeed an issue voiced by many of the customers on various forums on the internet
The Tipping Point 