We had a prepaid Airtel Mobile (No. 9871272122). Sometime back, we started getting messages "Thank you for using Airtel services". We ignored these messages initially not knowing why these messages were sent to us by Airtel.

One day, my daughter noticed that there was a deduction of ~ Rs.30 from our a/c balance. This was just a coincidence as she had checked balance in our a/c previous day. At that moment, I complained to Airtel and I was told that the deduction was on a/c of "subscription for download from Yahoo.com". We had not subscribed to this. Then I contacted Nodal Officer of Airtel who promised to revert back within 1-2 hours. We didn't receive any response that day. Next day when I checked, the excuse given was that she did not respond that day as their system was not working. In the meantime, we got another similar message "Thanks ..." and this time deduction was Rs.100. On checking with Airtel, I "learnt" that we had subscribed this time to Hungama.com. Again a big surprise for us.

Not satisfied with the response from Nodal Officer, I took up this matter with Appellate Officer. Again same story was repeated (I believe now that Airtel system is down most of the time).

I had sent this complaint through email (with many reminders) and also followed up on phone. But no response was received even from Airtel Appelate Officer (who is supposed to be the higher authority for looking into and resolving customer grievances)

After returning from my tour, I again followed up with Airtel and now I received credit of about Rs.100 (out of Rs.160 deducted - This does not include any deductions before my daughter noticed this problem) after listening to same excuse one more time. When I asked this Appellate Officer why Airtel did not respond earlier (for more than 1 month), I was told that the Appellate Officer whom had contacted earlier has left the company (Note : Email ID of Appellate Officer is not in the name of any individual).

The result is :

I have decided to discontinue using Airtel Mobile no. 9871272122. I don't want to recharge it again and whatever balance is there as of today, I am sure that will eventually become ZERO soon even if I don't make any calls from this phone.

The above clearly shows that Mobile operators are charging consumers for the services they have not used. This way mobile operators may be making huge profits but at the cost of consumer.