Airtel Broadband: SmartBytes activated automatically, being forced to pay

tinygreenmunkey

tinygreenmunkey

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airtels 30gb unlimited
Hi,
Looking for answers, advice and help. I aplogise for the length!

I have a 30gb unlimited plan for my home, my cap was breached first week or so of this month, I'm OK with the ridiculous 256kbs till next billing cycle.

19-May 4:11pm, I receive an SMS informing me I have activated a 20gb Smartbyte plan. I had not accessed Airtel website nor had that ugly red popup pop up at said date or time. I call customercare (CC) to log a complain, they refuse and tell me I have activated this plan and I will have to pay. I email 121@in.airtel.com outlining the issue.

20-May: Imtiyaz Savanur calls me from Airtel, telling his records state my IP address accessed and activated this plan. So I have to pay. I explain to him again, I have not, my browser logs do not reflect any visit to their site. He ignores this, tells me I will have to pay. Sends me an email stating same. I email back in detail that since I did not activate, I will not pay.

21-May, Silent Treatment.

22-May 1:22pm, I'm emailing the Nodal Officer, after I submit, I recv an email and an sms informing I have successfully activated a Smartbyte plan for 50gb!!!!! I'm not even home!! I'm sitting in office. I call CC, I am blasting a Kalpana, who disconnects on me, next call a Geeta gets her Floor Manager Pravin who tells me yes a Smartbyte plan was activated and they are investigating, I don't have to pay.

23-May, Priyanka from Nodal office calls to tell me, her records state my IP address accessed blah blah. I tell her the second time I wasnt even home so obviously someones hacked my wifi or their software has a glitch, she doesn't care, sends me an email stating same. Enraged I email the Appellate Office, attaching all past correspondence.

Now-
1. I'm sure the Appellate office will call back with the same asinine response about IP address. If my Wi-Fi was hacked, IP address records are useless. Can I and how do I force Airtel to check the MAC ID of the PC that accessed/initiated the plan?
2. Its dead certain I'm not going to pay, what is my next step if Appellate office does not resolve this issue?
3. The second call to CC was from office landline, proof that I was not at the location at where the broadband connection is installed, so I could not have accessed/initiated any plans on that connection. Will the records of this call state the number I called from since the CC Kalpana did ask me if I was complaining for the line I'm calling from?

Any help on this matter would be appreciated! I'm utterly frustrated and its been a total waste of my time. What surprises me the most is that they refuse to listen and ignore everything, like how that STUPID popup has no login required, no confirmation from customer required via email/SMS back to Airtel to activate a plan.

I appreciate the time anyone takes to read and reply to my post.

Thank you in advance.

Tiny.
 
Assuming you're telling the truth and that no else apart from you has access to your home connection, do the following :Contact airtel presence on twitter regarding your issue. If that doesnt work out, threaten them with disconnection. That should fix your issues hopefully. Last of all, if nothing works, dont pay the disputed amount and move to another isp.
 
x720- Thank you for responding, I appreciate the input and will try these options as well if the Appellate Office doesn't help me.No offence, but I seriously doubt anyone has the time to sit and write all the details out for an issue that is fictional. I live alone, maybe I should have mentioned that.
 
No offence, but I seriously doubt anyone has the time to sit and write all the details out for an issue that is fictional. I live alone, maybe I should have mentioned that.

You can't be too sure these days 😉

Btw, if you arent sure about the wifi hacking part, dont mention it, coz they'd hold you responsible for it.

Also, is your network unsecure ? WEP or WPA2 ?
 
Hey I too have a broadband airtel 30 gb unlimited connection. Suddenly on 3rd August I got a mail saying I activated 20 gb. I have not even crossed my 80% of my limit. I had no request from airtel whether I wanted to activate smart bytes. Out of the blue I suddenly get a mail saying I activated. Upon calling the customer care they rudely told me I was the reason. On contacting Airtel presence they again it was purchased by me. It looks like a trap where they are activation irreversible service and then blaming the customers for it. It is ridiculous that Airtel is behaving so cheaply. How did your issue go?
 
Hey I too have a broadband airtel 30 gb unlimited connection. Suddenly on 3rd August I got a mail saying I activated 20 gb. I have not even crossed my 80% of my limit. I had no request from airtel whether I wanted to activate smart bytes. Out of the blue I suddenly get a mail saying I activated. Upon calling the customer care they rudely told me I was the reason. On contacting Airtel presence they again it was purchased by me. It looks like a trap where they are activation irreversible service and then blaming the customers for it. It is ridiculous that Airtel is behaving so cheaply. How did your issue go?

AirFACKINGTel had waived off fee for the first 20GB Smartbyte plan but refused to waive off the 50BG Smartbyte. I have so far not paid and I WILL NOT PAY till they waive off this wrongful fee as well. After fighting with them on phone and emails for the past 2 months, now they seem to have added a validation captcha in the ugly red popup for Smartbyte activation and the blithering idiots keep telling me how the popup works. Like, hello! The captcha you added cause you KNOW there is fault in your system and other customers must be calling you to complain about wrongful activations as well. You start out with fleecing the customer by activating on their behalf, then blame the customer for activating it, then force the customer to pay caring a whit what the customer is trying to tell you that the FAULT LIES WITH YOUR SYSTEM AIRFACKINGTEL.

Yes. I'm super frustrated with their CC, Nodal and Appellate Offices and seriously... good luck to these mofos if they think I will pay.
 

AirFACKINGTel had waived off fee for the first 20GB Smartbyte plan but refused to waive off the 50BG Smartbyte. I have so far not paid and I WILL NOT PAY till they waive off this wrongful fee as well. After fighting with them on phone and emails for the past 2 months, now they seem to have added a validation captcha in the ugly red popup for Smartbyte activation and the blithering idiots keep telling me how the popup works. Like, hello! The captcha you added cause you KNOW there is fault in your system and other customers must be calling you to complain about wrongful activations as well. You start out with fleecing the customer by activating on their behalf, then blame the customer for activating it, then force the customer to pay caring a whit what the customer is trying to tell you that the FAULT LIES WITH YOUR SYSTEM AIRFACKINGTEL.

Yes. I'm super frustrated with their CC, Nodal and Appellate Offices and seriously... good luck to these mofos if they think I will pay.

WTF, that's the dumbest thing I've heard an ISP do! They waived 20 GB but did not do the same the for 50 GB! Ridiculous. These *******s sent me a mail today saying it can only be activated from the customer end! This has already happened when they added PC secure pack without my consent. Since it was 100 Rs. and I though someone activated it by mistake, I just let it go! And with 3 days left in my billing cycle how the **** am I supposed to consume it. Every other ISP is equally bad if not worse! I thought I will just torrent 20 GB continuously in 3 days and be done with this whole mess. The worse part is the customer service who are uneducated idiots who don't even know how to converse with customers. Airtel should hire more qualified people if they want to remain with the customers. Are you still with Airtel? Did they continue your service without payment for the 50 Gb?
 
They haven't disconnected my service yet, but the collections dept. keeps calling me for making payment on 2 months outstanding bill now, and I keep repeating the same story to probably 25 different individuals with the same ANNOYINGLY scripted response with zero concern to what the customer is saying. I am shopping for another ISP, Spectranet hopefully, though I know they are all nearly the same in terms of service. What really angers me are the imbecile cretins employed in AirFACKINGTel's Nodal and Appellate Office, just incredibly and shockingly rude! I don't get it, why have such a hostile customer care when your intention anyways is not to provide ANY care to the customer.
 
That sucks buddy, I'm going to avoid the hassle and get another connection right away than sit and explain to them for the next two months. It's sad this is the plight of a major ISP provider in India. I'm hunting down reliance and spectranet. Reliance has good speeds and Spectrnet good pricing. But in both cases, there seems to be a lot of complaints. I actually got off Airtel and went for You Broadband last year and I had no internet for the first week because of some maintenance work and after the speed didn't cross 600 Kbps when I had a 12 Mbps connection. The sales lady was horrible and actually started arguing with me when I wanted to disconnect. I don't want to end up in that situation again. I just called spectranet and the customer service didn't know the difference between Bangalore and Chennai!lol! I don't how these guys are going to sort out internet issues. And reliance there are billing issue complaints. I would go for poorer customer service than Airtel whose customer rep are as rude and stupid! Any idea between reliance and spectranet.
 
Go for Spectranet if your not in Bangalore or if you are there then Beam.

Specranet is much lesser evil than the others. I wanted to get their connection too but for past 5yrs they have decided that they will only provide service area left side of the road and not on the right, just weird and does't not make sense and sucks too and I had to end up with MTNL and which resulted in the birth of this thread.


https://broadband.forum/india-broadband/80625-mtnl-broadband-painful-and-frustrating/
 
LOL I'm staying the heck out of MTNL. Im in Chennai so safest bet is Spectranet. I'm in luck I guess, I'm on the left side of the road haha. But lets see, if they don't call back and tell me serivce is available in area, I'm not forcing the issue. As they say, Known devil is better than an unknown angel. This is the only place on earth where broadband connection is so frickking tedious!
 
Ping seems real fast! But how does fast ping help? lesser disconnection/idle time? What speed connection did you choose? I assume 1 Mbps. I thought that didn't include upload speed and just your download should be 1 Mbps.
 
its some 512 kbps one night 2MBps .... better pings means things work faster...
 

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