Out of nowhere, once Airtel decided to activate "Ask-A-Doctor" service on my mobile. I quickly asked their customer service to stop it. I was told that they have "deactivated" the service and I need to wait till the bill to be generated to know if any refunds are needed.
The bill was generated and there was additional charge. After complaining, that was reversed quickly.
However, I still kept getting annoying tips from their service, atleast one message daily.
I kept complaining and they kept telling me that the service has been deactivated and I can send message "STOP" to 121. Sending this message informed me (via message) that there are no value added services active on my number. And their tips kept raining.
Once again I complained and I was told same solution - send STOP message. But this time there was an additional input, they asked me to disable flash messages. Nevertheless, that didnt help.
I tried to post feedback to their case response. There was a link for feedback in the mail communication. However, upon submitting the response, an error is thrown - "User not authorised to access page!". Perhaps its a preset logic to avoid negative responses reaching in their queue!
Upon serching net a bit more, found that they have another keyword "UNSUB" for the "Ask-A-Doctor" service. I sent that and got immediate reply - the service has been deactivated!!!- How this service got activated on its own?
- Is this a consumer scam/tactics by Airtel to generate additional revenue from users who dont care? (They were quick to reverse the charge. Normally they would fight for one paisa of outstanding bill amount but here since they started it on their own, they quickly tried to cover it up maybe. So people who complain would keep quiet, others would keep paying)
- Why their customer reps keep sending irrelevent replies? They are not even aware that there are two different types of services (facepalm)
Do let me know if you have similar experience with these tactics of Airtel.
