Porting-in mandatory plan from the retailer

My friend from a Tier 3 town ported from BSNL to Airtel Prepaid just yesterday , and sim is yet to be activated . As its low populated city , Airtel doesnt have its official store yet
So he went through a third party retailer u know on the street . My friend unaware of the exacting porting procedure paid 50 Rupees for sim . Its okay nothing wrong here yet . Issue is retailer is asking for 600 Rupees for activation of the introductory plan for 3 months whereas my friend just wants a single month plan . Can the MNP first recharge be done online avoiding this retailer ?

You can do the recharge online once the Sim is active. I did that for my airtel prepaid as well.

is number really ported? means old sim is deactivated?
If old sim is active, the retailer is cheating and is giving you a new number of airtel and will activate it with that 600 and docs supplied...

They take that in advance as their first big comission is linked with first recharge. It is to ensure you wont do it from elsewhere.
If portin is unsuccessful which is very rare then you can ask for refund of recharge amt.

Yes it is about the commission. Even airtel store does this. But i tell them FU on their face when they ask for first recharge.

@mikrotik Can I do the recharge of Airtel sim from the prepaid plans section for existing subscribers ? If Yes I found this MNP plan on Airtel official website . This makes us actually believe about the compulsory recharge. Have a look

The 297 is not a normal existing subscriber plan. this makes us think there are separate MNP plans

@igloo The retailer has given Sim and told to come after the Airtel sim gets signal . Still the payment has not been done . I will tell my friend to do a online recharge of 199 when the sim get signal instead of these people`s c*ap🤭 . Correct me if I am wrong

@popcorn The sim is not new number I suppose . The retailer has given new sim packet of Airtel and told to wait 4 days for sim to get transferred to Airtel

You just need to recharge like a usual airtel number from airtel website.

@mikrotik I will do that as soon as sim gets active