Harish Palaniappan's

I am an Airtel customer..

Oh I feel so unfortunate to put that as the first line here, because Airtel's customer service people are not skilled enough, neither are their technical system good.

For instance, if you raise a compalint, any complaint it be, they will send at least 6 sms after the complaint, ... and no no,..none of the sms will be anything useful to you. it wont say the status of the compalint or its resolution.. it will stupidly be message like "we hope you are happy with your interaction with us", "thank you for your interaction.. your complaint number is xxxxxx", "if you are satisfied with the answer send YES or NO to us".. and all such useless messages immediately after you raised the complaint and well before the service team actually gets back to you with any resolutions.

And then, you take the pain of clicking menus to delete all these junk messages.

I even raised complaints/suggestion with them to stop junking like that. The stupid personnel just said, "there is no way we can do that, but it is very useful for you to receive these messages"

I told him.. "i know what is useful for me.. you please take this as a suggestion to your IT dept if not as a complaint". He said he will and took it as a new interaction, and I got all the junkload of messages for that also.

My recommendation:
Don't expect common sense with these guys. (sometimes you must not even expect a resolution.. very often they close calls, a lot of them, indirectly saying it is not possible to correct it).
They just probably use a stupidly, badly created software system for complaints, and rather than improving that system, they are happily pushing that bad quality to customers who raise complaints.

Once, I got very irritated with the way the courier service airtel uses, throws my airtel bills on the lawn... and make me go searching and pick it. Ignorant at their best.. they mean they are very busy and can't bother to insert it into your letter box sticking on your gate.

And this courier guy was coming in odd timings so I could never catch him and tell him to do it properly. .. so I called customer service and told them this.

Not surprisingly, the customer service guy said, "for these things we can't take a complaint sir.. we don't have those options for selecting the type of complaint here".. they humiliated me a further more for calling them for a problem like this.

And after I insisted enough over about 45 mins, they got me on to a supervisor who took it as a complaint and took details of the region of my house to find out their courier service guy.

It didnt get resolved, I was out picking my bills again, or worser, the stupid person delivered my bills in somebodys house, and somebody's bill in my house. I went back to them, the customer service people, and asked them to change the options to email my bills.. they simply adviced me to do it online at their website... though i had taken the time to call, they wanted me to first try it there.

I did try... their website rocks.. rocks the negative way.
Nothing will work, and all information they provide regarding help documents or contact emails, will all point to the same intelligent thing... "the customer service team". The website will ask you to email complaints to 121@airtel.in, or something like that, but that email only gets automatically raised as a complaint with the stupid team. and again, all those junkloads of messages.

After a few attempts, I finally got my bill emailed. ha, great I thought.. but how can they help you so easy.. they are gods who read books like "101 one ways to screw your customer's happiness". The email had the bill as a pdf which was password protected.. security it seems so that nobody else reads the bill in MY mailbox.

The email message said, send "ebill pass" to xxxxx to get your password. :o) Can you imagine.. I cannot imagine any better stupid system.. I think they unanimously should be given the award for "worst automation system" for 4-5 years in a row.

And, yes, I sent "ebill pass" to get my password.. you know what.. i got an instant reply.. i eagerly opened to read the message, and it said, "thanks for your query,.. but we are unable to service you at this time.. try later" :o) ha ha..

You might think i am exaggerating things here.. you must be an airtel investor. But all these are true experiences I have had for the one year I am subscribed with them... these days, every time i think that i should contact customer service to find out something, i get doomed thinking of the process ahead.

If you thought.. "all these things are small problems.. happens with any company.. and i am only cribbing.. ".. then I am 100% sure you must be indian.. because that is normally indian attitude. we indians have an infinite quality to tolerate anything.

Anyways, after those experiences.. I have not had an instance where i should call them again.. until today.

This is what happened today..

Khul ja sim sim
I have a motorola v3i phone.. with airtel as my service provider.. (this time i dont want to start the line the bad way.. so i put motorola first).

Trying the phone's security settings... to set a sim password, i entered a wrong password once. and the phone said "SIM BLOCKED". usually this happens only in the third attempt.. blame it on the phone's software, or the sim card's make, or the service provider.. finally it is my phone connection that is screwed up.

I pray with Google and try to search information.. almost all websites said "contact service provider", and i really searched again because I couldn't imagine calling my service provider.

I call up Airtel, and the guy says he will give me something called a PUK number(Pin unlock key it means).. and i enter it when my phone asks for it.. I said,"It never asked, it just says SIM BLOCKED".. He started repeating the same theory again and gave me the PUK number and asked me to use it and solve it.

After more conversation explaining things, he said, "if it says SIM BLOCKED, it just means you have to take your vehicle and drive to airtel office, and ask for a duplicate SIM card and the problem is solved.."

The catch here was, Airtel charges 150 rupees for a duplicate SIM card, and all information on your old SIM card is possibly irrecoverable..

yes yes, I later found out that things are not that bad.. but this is the kind of information that the customer support guy had, and I told him how bad sense it is to make use of such things to earn money from customers, and how airtel should really do it the common sense way to help customers by providing all this security information during service registration rather than just giving registration receipt alone.

He took that as a complaint.. and gave me an interaction number. Junkload of messages arrive, as usual i delete them later.

I learnt from some friends that there are other service providers who were worser.. a friend once said "atleast he gave you the PUK number for free.. my provider asked me to come to his office, pay him 25 rupees and then tore a rough sheet of paper, wrote down the PUK number and gave it alongwith with a receipt for 25 rupees as service charges"

Hard nuts these companies are.. I prefer to use the term "Money mongers"... always and ever looking at everything as an opportunity to make money.. like the government always looks for ways to tax people.

No wonder why even though Airtel is so big in india, it has nothing outside india.. not even a scrap business. Only indians will sit silent and pay up .. for all that attitude and infinite tolerance we seem to have.

Ok.. no use talking about either.. indian people and indian companies.

The solution I found out from a website with more search was.

If you use motorola v3i, and it says SIM BLOCKED, then try this:

Before doing this, take the PUK number from your service provider. You can also change the PUK number to something you remember so that you don't have to call your wonderful service providers for it later if this happens again.

Unblock SIM pin code:
**05*PUK*newpin*newpin#

1. Key in **05*
2. Your phone will recognize that gsm code and ask you to enter puk code.
3. Enter puk code, and it will unblock your sim.
4. Type new 8 digit puk code. so that the change overwrites the provider set puk code with your new puk code. next time this happens you will enter your PUK code.

That's it.. about unlocking sim on your motorola mobile.
More gsm codes at: http://www.mobileshop.org/usertech/gsmcodes.htm