My mobile number is 9845226582 (Bangalore). Recently I migrated from Airtel Prepaid connection(same number, which I was happily using for 8 years) to postpaid connection - Voice & Data 399 plan. On 3rd March, I suddenly started receiving a flurry of SMS from Airtel Live, thanking me for subscribing for host of beauty downloads, video games downloads, cricket downloads which cost me more than Rs 500. I immediately called up customer care and complained about this and they informed me that they cannot take any action until my bill gets generated on 12th of March. Today, I am not able to make outgoing calls and when I enquired customer care, they are asking me to make partial payment for the non-sense downloads which automatically happened without my knowledge/authorization. Immediately after the call, I received an SMS asaking me to pay Rs. 904 as partial payment so that outgoing calls can be activated. This is absolute harassment. For the first time in my life I felt that even Airtel can cheat. I had such a nice impression about this service provider when I was having pre-paid connection for 8 years. One month after migration, I came to know the real face of Airtel. I am planning to disconnect this service if my concerns are not addressed by Airtel and I am even planning to share this information among my friends and co-workers so that nobody goes for Airtel henceforth.

I have got the bill now which says I have downloaded 11 games/wall paper through Airtel Live on March 3rd. I have asked Airtel to disconnect this service as I am not going to pay anything above the plan and the calls I had made. Three or four of their customer care personnel called me up to say that those downloads were all genuine, but I can prove this with my handset that none of the request were fired from my mobile set. I request this Forum to please take this issue further and let me know my course of action. I would also like to have all the conversations that I had with Airtel customer care executives starting from March 3rd (Around 1 to 1.30 PM) when I first intimated them that I had received two SMS from Airtel Live thanking me for the download, and then at around 5.00 PM on the same day when I called them up and informed them that I had received close to 10 such messages even after complaining few hours back and asked them to deactivate Airtel Live. That should actually be proof enough for the fraud dealing that Airtel does to charge their customers. I have attached a snap shot of the portion of the bill which deals with this amount.

Dear Customer,

This is to inform you that your concern has been noted and our team is working on a resolution. At the outset, we apologize for the inconvenience faced by you. We will get in touch with you for further details of your concern as the need arises.

Regards,
Rakesh Kumar
Airtel Customer Service Team

Dear Airtel,
It is good to know that you are taking some action from your side. But yesterday (25/03/2010) my SIM got de-activated and hence I have removed the SIM from my mobile. Hence if you want to contact me, you can always do that through this forum. There is no point in waiting for you to sort out the issue and simply keep my mobile device as a dummy (It has been like that since 09/03/2010). I have decided to move to another subscriber. If you want me to pay the bill for Feb 2010 and March 2010 (Upto 24/03/2010) I am ready to pay provided the following things are taken care of.

1. Bill amount for all the downloads worth Rs. 832 and the corresponding tax amount is removed from the Feb-March 2010 controversial bill.
2. Subtract my security deposit from the final settlement (Rs. 300), since I hardly used it for two months.
3. I had paid Rs. 50 as CLIP charges (which should not be collected as per the plan) in the first bill (Jan-Feb2010) which your customer care had acknowledged and promised me to correct in the upcoming bill and which they never did. Hence this Rs. 50 should also be subtracted from the final settlement.
4. Final settlement should not add penalty or late payment fee for all these since I am not at fault and it is your illegal downloads which you pushed into my mobile that has caused all this problem. I had applied for disconnection in the middle of March and the Bill payment date for this controversial bill is still 31/03/2010 that is still 5 days from now.
I am putting all these in black and white so that there is no false claim from your side that I had defaulted.

Thanks for taking some action to disconnect the service.

Ramanathan

Dear Airtel,

What's happening? No response from your side? I am not your customer anymore and hence please do not charge me month on month. I threw your SIM card as soon as it got de-activated (March 25th 2010). Can somebody look into the matter and come up with a final settlement plan. I am ready to pay only for the calls I made and the Plan charge as I had mentioned in my earlier communication.

Ramanathan

Dear Airtel,
I got the next bill (For March) today. Still there is no action taken on the previous bill. I am not going to pay any of these until you correct the previous bill. Please do not blame me / charge me with penalty if you are serious about me clearing the bills / due. As mentioned earlier (many times), I am ready to pay only for the calls I made and the plan value and I will not pay for the downloads which you pushed into my mobile out of business greed and brand arrogance. That was illegal and it amounts to cheating (Section 420) the hapless customer. I might consider filing an FIR against Airtel if things go bad. Please do not take this lightly since I am not your customer anymore and I have nothing to loose. All I demand is that you rectify your bill for the month of Feb-March and send it to me and I will pay along with this March-April bill, the very next day. I dont want to keep your money and I dont have the habit of cheating anyone the way you do. I go by ethics.

Ramanathan