Photo-fonearena.com
Remember how I waited for my first Ipad? Well the wait for the 3G from Airtel was something very similar. I had in fact told a friend that while each one bursts crackers on Diwali, I would be rejoicing the launch of the Airtel 3G which never happened at the end of it. Ten to twenty trips to the airtel store and the representatives over there appeared as clueless as me when questions were shot off regarding the “Grand” launch. They kept telling me to try it on their system and check out the speed, but I refused to do that since I do not trust these trial runs as connections are bound to be faster when they work on limited systems.
So, the wait continued and one fine day I get a message from Airtel saying 3G services are available. Ok, first thing I do is send a message 3G to 121 and then comes a reply-“ we are processing your request.” I wait a couple of hours and when nothing turns up, I call the customer care (some balls I had to do that). The usual questions begin-“ which make are you using and blah blah blah. Then comes the shocker, “sir the 3G services are not available for the Iphone 4.” I get into a fight and ask them to check their website which clearly mentions that the 3G services are available for this phone. They say that they would get back to me and fifteen minutes later they say, “sorry sir, it is available and are engineers are working on it.” They also go on to say that I need to resend the activation message. I do exactly and the message I get is, “we already have a provisioning request with us, please try after sometime.” I try for exactly another month and I would not want to mention the number of times I have called their dumb customer care regarding this. Finally I give up and go for the next best option. I buy two more sim cards. I try activating the 3G on one of them and unfortunately or expectedly their servers are down. I resend that message after some time and to my horror I get the same message, “we already have a provisioning request with us, please try after sometime.” I start to give up, but then I need an internet connection on my phone and so go in for the regular GPRS connection which gets done immediately. Once this was done, I try activating my 3g once again. Magically it is done this time. Thrilled obviously, I go to the next step and that was to activate a data plan. The message is sent and then comes another nightmare. You already have over 50 MB in your account and hence a data plan cannot be activated. Do I dare call the customer care again? Yes I dared do that once again and the same bull shit was given to me.
The next thing I do is throw the damn sim card and replace it. This time the activation was smooth and my 3G services were finally activated. I sit down with my friend Abhishek to discuss 3G. The one question that we ended up asking each other, “where the fuck is the speed man?” Abhishek then goes on to say that the speed is slow is because they have not launched completely and it may take a while more for them to improve their services.
Ok, as of now the 3G services are active on my mobile. It works once out of every ten times. The solution to get it working again is a restart of the phone and this option again works once out of every five times. Once you use up the data there is no indication of how much I have used or how much is left in my account. While I continued to battle all this I get a call from airtel and the representative goes on to say, “ good morning sir (in the afternoon) we are pleased to launch the 3G services and as you are our special customer we are offering a free trial.” It was time for me to get back and I tell him to go to hell. I ask a couple of questions and narrate my trauma to him to which he says, “ how sir, no chance sir.” Then he says I will get back to you. It has been 34 days and I am not waiting for him to get back.
I am sure that many if not all of you have had this problem. If you want to vent your anger out against these services then post your comments. And by the way, I don’t even expect Airtel to change things at the end of this.
vikashnanjappa 