Archna Singh sent a message to Sunil Mittal that said:
Dear Sir,
I had taken an international package worth INR 6799 plus taxes for a trip to South Africa and Namibia for my trip to these two countries in Africa. I had spoken to an executive who assured me that both these countries fall under zone D and is covered under this package for a validity of 30 days. I was in South Africa for 2-3 days and in transit but most of my travels were in Namibia. Upon this, the executive who activated my package assured me that both these countries are covered under this (proof of which is very simple to obtain - from the voice recording of this call made around 25-28th March 2019). I asked him at least ten times and he confirmed it to me. Ten days into my travel, I receive a bill of 20,000 plus on 10th of April via SMS. As the network was poor, I couldn't go to my emails and check the detailed bill. I called up Airtel from the jungles of Africa with great difficulty and after holding on for 30 minutes, I was told that the package wasn't activated and they will look into it and revert back to me. They said I will receive a call within 24 hours. At this time I was clearly told that due to some technical issue the package hadn't been activated and they will rectify the same at the earliest. After 24 hours I called them again and this time I spoke to another supervisor who informed me that Namibia was not covered under the package and the executive who gave me the package had misinformed me. He also told me that if you use your phone now I will have to pay complete charges and hence was asked not to use this phone at all. I told this supervisor that it is not my problem if I was given wrong information and all you need to do is listen to the voice recording and reverse this bill as I am not going to pay this due to your fault. He agreed and asked me to give them 72 hours to escalate this and get a complete reversal of this. After 72 hours there was no action taken and no call received from them. I called them again from Africa and again after holding for 30 minutes or so, I was told that we apologize and we will get back to you. Till I returned back to India on the 29th April 2019, I still hadn't heard from any of these senior supervisors, namely, Deepak and Sonu and despite them agreeing to their faults and their fake promises to escalate this case and do a complete reversal of this bill, till date I haven't received any information from them. Upon landing, I immediately called airtel again to ask what had happened to my dispute, to which I was told that your complaint was closed as no error from our side was found. This was neither communicated to me via SMS, phone or email. I patiently spoke to yet another senior supervisor, Jyoti on 29th April at 9:21 am and yet again explained the whole case for the fifth time. Again yet another complaint was registered under the reference number 31-1460257731024. (The previous unresolved complaints were - 31-1384383788894 and 31-1381145302232 ) This supervisor told me to go ahead and file a legal complaint if I wanted to but assured me that she will call back within 24 hours. It is been more than 24 hours and more than 19 days since my first complaint. Because of them, I was stuck in the jungles unable to use the phone or contact my family for the entire duration of the holiday as I was in the jungles and had no access to a city or a local number. This, despite several calls and registered complaints and a simple voice recording to be checked from their end that how the executive misinformed me and therefore this case is erroneous and should be reversed, Airtel has not taken any steps to resolve this. Instead, am getting threatening messages from Airtel to pay the bill immediately else my phone will be disconnected. I write to you with great faith as the only step left to me post this will be to file a legal case against them for harassment and damages. Thank you for your time. I hope by reaching out to you I will be able to get a satisfactory resolution to this case. They should not be harassing their consumers to such an extent.
Warm Regards,
Archna Singh
