Sir,
I (along with one of my friends) had bought 2 sim cards ( Mobile numbers: 97557 13020 and 97557 13758) from a retail shop near Rau station in first week of July. Since we are outstation students we had submitted photocopies of Permanent Address proof (hometown) and College I-card. As per our retailer, these documents were sufficient for getting a new sim connection.

Our sims were activated the very same day. We were able to use them for approximately one month (till 10th August). During this period we had received twice a sms from airtel which said "Dear customer you have not submitted documents". This message was sent from a system generated number, so replying to that number for any clarification was out of question. Further our retailer had specifically mentioned during the sim purchase that we had sumbitted all the requisite documents. Thus we failed to understand the purpose of this sms. In fact once while re-charging our sim we had mentioned about this sms to the retailer, but even he had no idea about the reason behind this sms.

However all of a sudden on 10th August our sims were de-activated and our cellphones showed a message "Simcard registration failed". This drastic action was taken without giving us any prior notice or without any call from their Customer Representative regarding any problems with document verification.

Later, we again approached our retailer who gave us a visiting card of one Mr. Satyenderpal Singh Bhatia (Designation- Rural Sales Officer) who sits in Metro Tower, A.B. Road Office of Bharti Airtel Services Ltd. We got in touch with him via telephone on 11th August. He assured us that our services would be restored within next 2 days. On 13th, we again called him up and he said that the office would be closed for next 3 days and our issue would be resolved once the office commences work on Monday (17th August). We called him up on morning of 17th , when again he re-assured us that services would be activated (in his words "100% aaj ho jaayega") by Monday evening. Each time we would ask him what was the reason behind this sudden cancellation of our services and we would get a response saying "Sir mein dekh raha hoon" and then he would promise us some date by which he would restore our services.

This series of event kept on taking place till finally on 21st August, tired of his repeatedly false promises, we gave him an ultimatum that he start our services immediately. He replied very rudely that this was not his problem. He said "Yeh mera problem nahi hai. Main isme ab kuch nahi kar sakta. Aap khud se dekh lo." Inspite of this shameless reply, we still prodded him to atleast tell us the reason behind this sudden de-activation of our sims. He replied "Maine bol diya na ki yeh problem mere se solve nahi hoga. Aap ko jo karna hai woh kar lo." Frustrated with his shameless attitude we told him that we will lodge a complaint with Consumer Grievance Cell. He replied "Aap ko jo karna hai kar lo."

Today (1st September) we went to Airtel Service Centre near Geeta Bhawan. Their customer representative (Ms Rashmi) informed us that our numbers have been de-activated since 10th August due to negative document verification report. We enquired about our balance, she said that the balance is considered to be forfeited.

Dear Sir, I would like to get answers for following questions which are still puzzling me:

1) If our document verification had failed in the first place, why did the company sms us "Dear customer you have not submitted documents". Rather it would have made more sense to send a sms which would have informed us about negative document verification and the steps that we needed to take to prevent our services from being de-activated !

2) If the document verification had indeed failed (as we have learned now), why does their system allow us to re-charge those sim cards(one of the numbers was re-charged on 9th August i.e. one day prior to de-activation)? When the system sends a message after negative document verification, isn't it a moral responsibility of the company to not accept any recharges on those numbers till they are verified.?

3) I really pity the ignorance exhibited by Mr. Satyenderpal. If a professional like him cannot identify the exact reason behind de-activation of our services for 3 weeks (given the fact that he has access to complete system information) how will a common man like us know that our service would be de-activated due to negative document verification?

I would like to know about the balance that we had in our cellphones when the sims were de-activated. I agree that it was our blind trust in Airtel's professionalism and Mr. Satyenderpal which made us feel that our services would be restored and so we exhibited some lack of complaceny in reporting this matter earlier. But this is past now and we cannot change it.