2 replies to this topic

[velma]

Many Many apologies in advance for the super long post. I do not expect anyone to read it

Recently I was in deep need of a second sim card for my phone since my current number is a bit sketchy (bad network in many areas and connectivity issues). I decided to go in for a post paid connection as an alternative to my existing pre paid number. Here, we follow a system of pre paid and post paid where with a pre paid connection we buy a coupon of a fixed amount and then are given credit accordingly which we can use for calls, texts, internet and so on. While the post paid is where you pay for what you've used at the end of the billing cycle which is usually monthly. Now, since all these terrorist attacks, mobile operators have been advised to up their game when it comes to new registrations. I understand this decision and actually respect it but Aircel's procedure was simply ludicrous. I decided on going in for Aircel since they were packing in plenty of goodies for only 10 dollars a month, I assumed I would spend no more than 12 dollars even if I were to max my limits which made it seem ideal budget and service wise.

For reasons known only to me, I decided to get the card in the name of either parent, mum suggested I get it in dad's name since he could pay the bill if in case I was unable to. Now the regular requirements while buying a Sim card are address proof, photo identity proof, a few passport size photos and a completely filled out registration form. For address proof, the electricity bill usually suffices while pan card, passport, driver's license, voter's card is required for identity proof. When I do reach the place(Aircel office), I pick up the forms and note down the documents they'd require and so I picked up a photocopy of all the things making sure my dad's signature was present on all the documents and went back to their office where the lady there tells me that the physical presence of my father was required o.O Apparently these people require the registering person to BE THERE in the office with the ORIGINAL documents which they would photocopy themselves... ok... One problem, my dad wasn't in town and wouldn't be back for at least a month. My mother then suggested that I get the card in the name of a colleague of hers since he said he would be in that part of the town, I didn't mind waiting for a day longer so I agreed... Big Mistake!

Day 1 :- My mother's colleague X finishes registration by providing the documents and filling up the registration form. The lady there told him that the sim card would start working in 4 hours and no payment was required until verification was completed(verification of the submitted documents). Because the process turned out to be so damn easy, he got himself a sim card too, and like idiots we spent most of the afternoon, evening and night wondering why the cards were still inactive.

Day 2:- I was terribly upset since the new connection was still inactive and we didn't hear from them so we weren't even sure whether the verification had failed so X went over to their office where he was assured that the connection would start working by noon(another lie). As expected noon comes and passes but still no sign of the new connection working, at 3 pm he receives a call from one of the reps there asking him to pay a “security deposit” since he was from what they called “gray area”. Now we were miffed since the dumb bimbo hadn't mentioned this tiny detail even ONCE, even after she had been told the connection was required urgently, she failed to mention the fact that there is a different protocol for different area. I never lose my cool on representatives who let me know about delays and obstacles... But bimbos like her and her male bimbo manager? Yeah, their effigies burn as I type >_>

After we reach their office, the male bimbo, we shall call him moron in short tells us that since the colleague is from a grey area, he would not only have to pay the 11 dollar security deposit for each card BUT also should have a salary of 333 USD monthly(15,000 INR) to even contemplate getting a card from them. o.O WHAT! WHY WOULD ANYONE HAVE SUCH A REQUIREMENT FOR A CONNECTION THAT WOULD CHARGE US ONLY 500 INR PER MONTH... WHY?
Fine, I understand the company has a protocol, my question to them is why they didn't bother telling this beautifully significant fact on DAY 1 when we could've hitched up our skirts and fled from the scene? Why did they wait for us to finish registration and make us wait for 24 hours before telling this to us. And the best bit of the entire scene was that the cat dropping who assured us that the connection would work by noon was the same cat dropping who informed us about the salary requirement.

And if you were to get a pre-paid sim card from them, all you'd have to do is ask their moron to fill up the form for you, sign the document, give them the photocopy, fill in a nominal amount as the first recharge and then start using the card in an hour or two. Apparently their puny range of thought has assumed that only POST PAID cards can be abused while the prepaid cannot be abused? Interesting ideology. The cherry on top was the fact that even if I did rope in some one not living in the grey area, I could never have the card transferred onto my name since they allow sim cards to be transferred to blood relatives.....wuh? Maybe they do it so that they can arrest the family member

So I am done venting, I really do not like getting miffed over a company's protocol but they clearly wasted 2 days of my life. I assume that bimbo was probably dozing off while going through the documents because it clearly would have had the area mentioned

[k_nitin_r]

Velma,

I so totally know how it feels to get a SIM card only to figure out that it does not work later. That has happened to me twice, each time with a different cellular service provider. The first time I happened to have that experience with Airtel, a competitor of Aircel. I've seen a couple of Aircel advertisements but have never bothered getting one as they aren't one of the big players in my region so I would not get the benefit of calling someone else on the same network for reduced credit, or perhaps free SMSes, or even simply a clearer phone call. Here is my rather large account of all (and I really mean all) that happened when I got myself an Airtel prepaid SIM card only to figure out that I would be unable to use it and all I could do with it was to put the SIM card, the packaging, and the little promotional pamphlet into the bin.

I needed a SIM card because I just dropped off a flight and into the airport and got someone to drive me home. The SIM card I previously had was country-specific and there was no way to get international roaming enabled on it for the plan that I had subscribed to and even if there were international roaming, or if they had the possibility of turning my prepaid package into a postpaid package, the rates would be prohibitively high and the only thing I could use it for would be international SMS (anyone from the country of the carrier could send SMSes at the local SMS rate instead of having to pay for international SMS). Anyway, long story short, I chose not to have an international roaming SIM card because nobody would want to call me at a rate of about two dollars a minute and SIM cards are available for quite cheap anyway.

There were lots of different options when it came to choosing a carrier. I did have the option of getting one from Aircel and some of the other new carriers but I preferred to go with a carrier that has been in the business for a while and was large enough to have cellular towers to provide coverage even across highways that run through no-mans-land. I narrowed down my search to four different carriers, namely Airtel (not to be confused with Aircel despite have a similar spelling which in fact differs by just a single letter), Tata Idea Cellular (from the same guys who build the Tata Nano cars for about $3,500 and acquired the Jaguar automobile company), Tata DoCoMo (they already own Idea so why do they run another cellular services firm?), and Vodafone. I've heard about the changing policies of Idea Cellular and they would sometimes deactivate a subscription right out of the blue and on contacting their customer care service, they would request for additional identity proofs, address proofs, proof of residency, recent photographs and all other kinds of stuff. Now I am all for record keeping but this was just excessive. Just because it has been six months since I handed them a photocopy of my identity papers does not mean that I have suddenly adopted a new identity and have a new set of identity papers to furnish them with. If I did, I would have been a major con artist and they would have gotten into trouble for having two different sets of identity papers for the same phone number. I did not opt for DoCoMo at the time because it was one of the smaller players and I did not realise that it was a Tata group company. Even if I did, I would assume that they follow the same practices as Idea cellular when it came to deactivating plans and asking subscribers to hand out additional pieces of paper. I sometimes wonder if they simply collect all of that paper to hand over to the paper recycling firm and cash in on the deal but I guess that is a secret for them to know and some journalist to find out. I did have Vodafone Hutchison and Airtel to select from and having heard that Vodafone's coverage area is not all that great, I decided to go with Airtel.

Airtel seemed like a pretty good cellular services provider with its coverage area and having been operating for quite a while and they have their SIM cards available at grocery stores so I went to a grocery store that put up an authorized reseller sign of Airtel and the guy collecting papers said that all I needed was a passport-sized photograph, a passport photocopy, and a photocopy of my electricity bill. Those have three things covered, my photograph, my identity proof, and my address proof. I did have the option of using my driver's license as an identity proof but the ink that the licensing department used on my license wore off within about two years and now I have got one that cannot be photocopied because my picture on it is invisible on the resulting photocopy. So much for the term 'photocopy' as the photo is the one thing that it cannot copy. They did say that I could use a PAN card. Now that has nothing to do with a frying pan or any other sort of cooking utensil. It was a card issued by the government to keep track of tax payments, income tax, and all that sort of stuff. Then, there was the ration card which is pretty much useless in this part of the city because there are grocery stores all around and no ration stores in sight. Besides, the ration cards from the country side can be used to avail free medical treatment except that the folks working at the hospitals are corrupt and take the "free" out of free medical treatment. Then, for the address proof, there's the option of getting a telephone bill. If I am applying for a SIM card that probably means that I do not have a telephone so I wonder why they would state that they accept telephone bills as address proofs. I guess they expect people to move away from competing service providers and make it easier by having you just hand in a copy of the competitor's bill and they take care of the rest. A water or electricity bill would suffice for them too, which does make more sense because those are essentials that just about every house has. There's just one problem though - the water or electricity bill is typically delivered to the owner of the house so if you are renting it from the owner or if the house has been sublet to you, you have a water or electricity bill without your name printed on it. Well, I was lucky enough to have initials on the electricity bill that I was handing in so I could say, "Yes, that's my electricity bill." If the cellular services company looked at my electricity bill, they would probably think they are getting a rather good deal from their electricity services provider and if I can pay the rather large bill from the electricity service provider, I would have no problem paying off their telephone bills.

Anyway, so I run into a store for a photocopy of my passport and electricity bill, then I spend another half hour at a photo studio where they take my picture with a digital camera, have the memory card fed into a computer's memory card reader, use Adobe Photoshop to copy over the photograph seven times, print out a set of eight photographs of me, cut them into individual bits with a scissor, place them into an envelope and then hand them over to me. The whole deal took about forty five minutes after which I got back to the grocery store and filled out their form, which took about ten minutes. I then got to pick from the different phone numbers they had and I looked for anything that would be memorable enough for somebody to be able to call me without having to ask me for a business card, jot down the number in a phone book, or store my phone number in their cellular phones only to lose it later and then never call me. They had eight different prepaid packs to select from and so that was eight different phone numbers. I them paid the guy for the prepaid pack, handed in the photocopies, photographs, electricity bill, and the form and left with the SIM card in hand.

After getting the SIM card, it is a waiting game. You have absolutely no idea when the cellular services company gets all of your paperwork and activates your account for you but typically it should take a day. I waited for a whole day checking every other hour if the cellular services were activated. They weren't. I then waited for another day. I picked up the phone, dialed out a number, there was a voice response system that said my cellular services were not yet available and so I waited some more. Four days after having picked up the SIM card, I went over to the Airtel customer care center and asked them about the activation of my services. They then tell me that I have to call up the Airtel customer service center as they only handle sales and problems with the Airtel handsets. They also tell me that the Airtel customer care center is only reachable from another Airtel phone, which I did not have so I asked them, "May I use your phone?" Now being an Airtel customer care center, I would expect them to at least have an Airtel phone on their premises. The sales representative sheepishly replied, "I'm sorry sir but we do not have a phone." There is a saying about people not eating their own dog food but I forget what it is and when the customer care center of an cellular services provider does not get its telephone services from that cellular services provider, I would begin to seriously doubt why that customer care center continues to remain in existence. I visited another Airtel customer care center with absolutely the same response. They take pride in saying that they are an Airtel customer care center but they cannot answer any of my questions or figure out why my cellular services had not been activated because that can only be told by a representative from the Airtel customer care service helpline and they did not have an Airtel phone for me to call up the Airtel customer care service helpline from.

I didn't give up on the Airtel SIM card and checked if it had been activation for yet another day but there was again no luck and it simply had me connected to an automated voice response system. I then though that I just might be able to call up the Airtel customer care service helpline from a deactivated SIM card because it still has connectivity and there's an Airtel automated voice response system that tells me that the cellular services on my SIM card have not been activated yet. I dial the Airtel customer care service helpline number and voila! There it was, ringing on the other end. I waited for the automated voice response system to kick in, waited for the option to talk to a human sales representative but there was none so I opted to get value-added services from the cellular service provider. Typically, when you want to buy more services from a company, they decide to have a human flesh-and-blood hydrocarbon-based sales representative mammal for you to talk to and this time was no different. I finally heard a "Hello" from the other end and that was the first "Hello" that the SIM card has ever managed to get across. However, it was soon to be known that it was also the last. I asked the customer service and sales representative about my SIM card, which was obviously deactivated, and there was nothing they could do to activate it. I then pointed out that I had paid for a lifetime prepaid SIM and bought an Airtel prepaid pack at which point the sales representative interrupted me and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, but we do not sell a lifetime prepaid SIM." I looked at the prepaid pack and there it was - "Airtel lifetime prepaid pack" - so I said, "It says so on the pack." The sales representative held onto his ground and said, "I do not know what the pack says but we do not offer lifetime prepaid services. Airtel does not have any such package." Now, coming from a sales representative who sells the services of the cellular services provider, I would imagine that he knows what he is talking about but right there in my hand was the Airtel lifetime prepaid services pack containing the SIM card that I was using to call up the Airtel customer service helpline on a number that was only accessible on an Airtel SIM card and here was the sales representative telling me that such a package does not exist! Anyway, I decided to finally dump the SIM card because a service coming from a company that does not use its own services at its customer service centers, claims that its own services do not exist, and plays hard-to-get when it comes to customer support simply would not be worth it in the long run.

If you did manage to read this post all the way from the top to the bottom and are still here composing your reply to this post then let me tell you - getting a prepaid SIM card from a cellular service provider in India is no walk in the park. Velma tried to get a postpaid SIM card while I tried to get a prepaid SIM card and, as it turns out, neither of the SIM cards had their services activated and were later simply dumped into the trash for lack of anything better to do with them. The cellular service providers do not even want to provide services to customers so it makes one wonder - who would opt for their services and where do they make their revenues from? Perhaps their whole operation is a cover-up for something big and they just put them up as services rendered to people who are listed against the various phone numbers that were never activated and that were put in the dumpster by the subscribers for not having anything better to do with them.

[velma]

Ha ha hah a I actually got an Airtel number since the Aircel adventure was such a big failure. I am terribly sorry about your experience I particularly like how the pack spoke of a lifetime scheme while the exec had no clue, if you had gotten this sim card quite a while back, I would like to let you know that the lifetime pack did and in many places still exists .

A friend had recommended Reliance but another commented that you could probably divorce your wife unscathed but not reliance I had originally considered DoCoMo but a lot of people spoke of how bad their network was, the same sentiments about IDEA since I didn't want to invest in a number that could probably be of no use to me irrespective of who its endorser was or how successful it has been in other places. Don't even get me started on Vodafone, as if their prices aren't already exorbitant, their support team is not worth your time... They kept me waiting at their office for 45 minutes for a "registration form" and their registration process could give the passport agencies a run for their money :|

Even with the Airtel number, I had to wait 2 days before the dude took any action.. And for the aircel sim cards? I did not throw them in the bin.. No no, I did what they deserved.. Burnt their literature and smashed the card with a hammer(I broke the other one at their office when they were apologizing for the delayed information, though I broke the card accidentally... I doubt the manager thought it was accidental)

But it is like you said, it is no walk in the park to buy a connection here mainly because the ill maintained system and the lack of logic in the registration process. If you want to walk on hot coal, I dare you to transfer an existing number to a different provider, you realize how sadistic your provider can be when you attempt this daredevil feat.