Location/place: Kolkata
Name of company/service: Airtel
I have recently bought a new handset (Samsung) which offered me 1 GB of free 3G usage with Airtel. I have an Airtel postpaid corporate connection. Accordingly on 21st Jan’13 I have received a sms regarding the offer for 3G use for 1 month. I have started using 3G & regularly checked the usage. Although usage was not exceeded the limit the unbilled amount was showing a houge amount (around 3000/-) and Airtel representatives started giving threats for disconnecting my connection if I don’t pay the amount even before the bill is generated. Once I became rigid not to pay before bill is generated (as the 3G usage was supposed to be deducted during the calculation of total bill), they stopped. On 21st Feb’13 I got a sms saying my 3G offer has been expired & I have also stopped using it for ever. Ultimately the bill came with another surprise, which I would like to share with all Airtel 3G users. In the printed bill, no where it is mentioned how much is the consumption; it is showing in terms of pulse & duration of use (like voice calls!). May be the user have used only 11 kB but 2 pulses will be counted, like wise the total usage may by less than 1GB, total pulses crossed the limit. The bill is showing my 2G pulses are 34430, & 3G pulses are 71181, @30paisa per pulse amount 1032.90 & 2135.43, total Rs. 3168.33. Discount Rs. -2638.36. Net payment Rs. 529.97. I have asked the customer care representative for my usage, according to them, my total usage is 2G: 337540 kB + 3G: 710501kB; Total: 1048041 kB, converting into MB (divided by 1024) it comes 1023 MB. That means even though I have not crossed 1 GB limit I had to pay Rs. 529.97 because of their fraud pulse counting system. So, friends don’t believe in typing 3GspaceUSE & sending it to 121. What you can see it is the usage, not the actual pulses. You will never be alerted about the pulses. My suggestion is to avoid Airtel for 3G with postpaid connection, as I am not going to use any more & I will definitely escalate the matter to our higher management so that a e-mail is circulated to all our 17000 colleagues about this fraud billing system & not to use Airtel 3G with postpaid connection.
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