An open letter of appreciation to Airtel Services.

I have been using an Airtel Post paid connection over the past few months and the world class service provided by these fellas has been nothing short of blissful.

Hence I wanted to share my story with you all too. Justly so, after all no good deed should be left unappreciated.

Find below my appreciation for the excellent experience with Airtel services and the absolutely accurate information disseminated by their well-meaning "customer care representatives". All this while I was trying to get ISD activated on my Airtel connection.

1. When I first called the customer care at 121, the call was received by one Mr. Venkat who initially asked me to give the security deposit of 1500/-. When I made him to speak with a colleague of mine who was on a Company CUG – Corporate User Group - plan too and had got his number activated without any such absolutely necessary formalities, this guy asked me to just send across as a salary slip as “for CUG connections this initial security deposit is waived”. These were his exact words.

But I am sure this was a pure slip of tongue from a well trained representative.

2. I sent a salary slip with the request as indicated. Maybe this did not reach them? Anyways, spookily enough I got an auto reply saying that my association with Airtel was valued and they would get back to me in four hours.


No one did. I am sure they intended to. Just forgot about it, I think.

3. Then when I called to enquire about this status with 121 again in the evening, they told me that apart from the salary slip they need a letter from my office coordinator and hence they did not process this request on Wednesday.

I am so sorry my mistake that I am not exactly blessed with clairvoyance as to what all documents they might need. I am assuming here that these guys wanted the customers to guess their requirements without their explicitly having to tell so as I had specifically asked the guy in the morning if they needed anything apart from the Salary slip. He said a categorical NO at that time. His lack on willingness to make me run around out of extreme concern for my fatigue led to a day’s delay in this process. No worries, we Indians are accustomed to waiting.

4. Again, yesterday morning I sent across a mail this time with a proof of employment and the salary slip. This results in another mail from an esteemed person, another very sympathetic “customer care” representative who after making me run around for documents of various kinds get back to me with a lovely and adorable mail saying the activation cannot be done!!! If I wanted an ISD connection to be activated, I should send them a salary slip and letter from the coordinator.

My mistake- I attached a comic strip from Garfield series that shows up at my PC as my latest salary slip. But never mind, ISD no ISD, I have had a good time with the guys at Airtel. As it is I do not have much entertainment in life and all this processing kept me busy and happy for the last few days.

5. Since this ISD activation was taking this long, again as per the “suggestions” made by a well caring “customer care” representatives, I opted for a virtual calling card of denomination 500/-. The very extremely well trained and well informed representative of Airtel was asked about the call tariffs to Sydney, Australia. He took his own sweet time to check the information.

No, I am not complaining about the long waiting period. How can I? All this while taking care of my boredom, he made me listen to the latest AR Rahman’s tunes for Airtel. Ah, sweet music…

6. Then I was told that calls to any number in Australia costs 3.40/- only as opposed to the 6.40/- for a direct call. When I finally got the PIN and called the number I was trying to reach, within 50 minutes of conversation, the call got cut.

I agree that time flies when one is talking to a loved one but not so much so that you don’t hear 100 minutes zooming past. Right?

7. Now I am not great at mathematics but tell me something. 500 rupees at the rate of 3.40 per minute should give around 140 minutes of talk time, right? Please correct me if I am wrong. As I said my math isn’t that great.

8. So to clarify this I called a lovely representative of Airtel who again made me listen to Rahman and after around 10 minutes of a blissful concert for one, informed me that as per the information he has, calls to US/Canada are charged at 3.40 and gulf and Australia are charged at 8.90/- per minute.

Ah! So much for an advance notice. And so much for a consistent information base.

The best thing about Airtel is that everyone knows of the past record of documents sent and never do two people give two different sets of data information for the same query. Airtel – I need to let you know this! With such a valued association with you, I feel absolutely privileged.

But the fact is I have been never been cared for so much by anyone in the past and hence cannot take this much of care and concern.

Hence keeping in line with the ingrate species that we humans are expected to be, I request you to kindly cancel my Airtel connection. But the least I can do is to let the rest of the world know of the superb world class treatment you guys provide to us, the customers.

And the excellent service we can expect when we opt to check Airtel out. Thanks for all your time and effort. You guys have been so lovely and so very considerate.