airtel » I Said It

“Inglish” Customer Support

Aug 292010

I had some trouble getting my internet settings right on Airtel GPRS connections, so I called up the technical support. I selected English as the preferred language thinking that it would be easier to converse. Oh, I wished!! Little did I know that I had selected Indian BPO English, or Inglish(read this as,”language which you get when the BPOs train too hard to get out some heavy US accent out of their employee’s), as the language.

People who have called up the customer care cell of any service provider, would agree with me. Or at the least, the people who believe in the good old unaccented (Indian accented) english would agree. What has happened to the the english taught in our curriculum? Why do the call centre employees drop all the conjunctions from the sentences? Why do they have rabble out in hurry? Why is want to becoming wanna? Are they mistaking it to the US accent? Why can’t they sick to plain old accent which they have by birth, so that we “slow” Indians understand it properly?

India is said to be one of the major hub for BPO operations, with lots of multinationals servicing their customers through call centers located in India, operated by Indians. Do we provide the international clients with the cream of the employees, or is this kind of pathetic, messed up accented language passed on as english to them?

Here to Serve you……Charges Applicable

All thats Wrong, Money Matters No Responses »

May 042010

Loot Loot Loot!!! The mobile sharks are out for a loot. The current addition in their charging frenzy is levying a charge on the calls to their customer care executives. I was shocked when, while trying to communicate with the customer care executive of airtel, I was informed by the pre-recorded voice, that chatting to a cusomer care executive will be charged at the rate of 50 paisa for 3 minutes from 11th may 2010. Though the charge is not big, how does airtel justify this charge, when they levy a very highmonthly rentel to postpaid customers and huge service charge while refilling a prepaid connection? Aren’t such services suppossed to be included in this charges?

Going by the number of calls I had to make to the customer care executive today, just to rectify one small situation with my GPRS connection, I can safely guess that airtel will be making lots of money just by the calls generated to their customer service. This will surely lead to unethical business practices for better profits, since very few people will understand this situation and even fewer will protest. And I don’t think the government will have any say on this matter.

Oh!! Will will the number portability come to India!!

Out of 'Tune'

The Funny Side No Responses »

Feb 112010

Have you activated the caller tunes on your mobile? You could be wasting your money!!

I see that people have picked up this habit of activating every odd service that is ‘”provided” by a cell phone service provider. And caller tunes, or dialer tunes, or hello tunes, whatever the operator may call it, is on of those services. I regard availing such services as being made fool out of. And we require to pay for being fooled!! Allow this clarification.

1. On an average, a call on the phone is answered in around 5 – 8 seconds. So now lets do some exercise on this. pick up a song which you like, and sing it with the same speed that it is actually sung. But do that only for maximum of 8 seconds. Did you even get past the first verse? I bet, no. So now, if you will be picking up the phone in around 8 seconds, how much song do you think, the calling party will hear? Is it worth what you pay for?

2. Lets talk about quality of the sound. Though it can depend on your speakers, I have checked the sound quality on best quality head phones. Its worthless!! I remember using magnetic cassette tapes in olden times. If the head of the cassette player got fouled with dirt, or if the tape was damaged or scratched, how would the output quality be? Well, I have heard exact same quality of sound on caller tunes by some operators. Is it worth the money you pay?

3. When ever I call up a friend of mine, I hear a pre-recorded voice from the telcom operator, informing me that I can activate the caller tune which is about to follow, by pressing some combination of keys. The message is so long, that I haven’t heard what tune my friend has activated, till now. Each time, he picks up the phone before the message finishes. So, do you think you should pay for the ads from the operator?

4. My uncle activated the caller tunes facility, as it was free for few days. And yes, he forgot to deactivate the service on time. And before he could realise, some money was automatically deducted from his balance. So, since he had already paid for it, he decided to continue the service till the end of the month and deactivate it then. And he forgot again. This went on for few months, until he finally deactivated on the day that he was charged again for it.

So now my question if, “Do you think it is worth?”

I don’t think so….

Number Portability …. Finally at the Horizon

Changed Times 2 Responses »

Nov 212009

So now that the government has given an ultimatum to the mobile service providers in India, to get the infrastructure for number portability ready, I think that the mobile subscribers have finally been delivered to the promised land. And that too at a very affordable rate. Also, this marks the beginning of another price war with airtel leading the game by lowering call rates further. The order by the government sure did ring some cells…oops!!..bells.

An advise : Those wishing to port to a different service provider should start topping up less, since we don’t know if the balance will be carried forward.

Not Quite A Paisa Per Second

All thats Wrong 7 Responses »

Nov 092009

Yesterday I made a grab for the offer by our nations largest mobile service provider, Airtel, enabling me to make calls at a pulse of 1 second and the rate for which being 1 paisa. This offer has been made to compete the Tata Docomo’s offer of 1paisa / second call rate, and since I didnt want to get a new number I went for the offer by Airtel.

But, the shock I got, when I found out that for each call made, I was billed for 2-5 seconds extra. My phone would say a call duration of 27 seconds where as the charge was for 34 seconds. This is quite unethical and truely cheating their customers. Remember, I had to pay additional amount to get this service activated.

I am not a cheapo. I wouldnt care much about the money. But I think India is not given the treatment that it ought to get from the service industry. Had is been the USA, I am sure there would be lots of compensations going out to the customers, where the service providers would go bankcrupt.