At Last, I Finally Divorce My Partner of 17 Years!

Tribulations with Airtel!

I am one of the most loyal clients of Airtel. I started way back in 1996 when it was called Celtel.  Since then, (17 years later) I was still stuck with it even when most people switched to MTN and other providers.

Over the last few weeks  my credit I load in airtime has been running out fast. I tried to explain to my   nephew who works with Airtel, and he promised to look into it. I always load airtime worth 20K sometimes more. It is an advantage because you get 100% bonus extra. This week on Monday I had around 16K and almost same amount as bonus airtime. I tried to send a text message but it failed, I did not mind as I thought it was the network. Later when I tried calling, I was told I did not have enough credit on my account!

I decided to wait and load the next day. At 11.00am the next day, I loaded 20k again. When I returned home, I tried calling at 12.00noon and I was told I had no credit! I called my  nephew but he was not in office, though he promised to follow it later. I was impatient and decided to call customer service. They took me through their usual "what happened....bla bla bla?", and I explained. They promised to work on it and resolve it within 24 hours.  The customer service agent thought the problem could be the phone I have (iphone5), according to him, Airtel is yet to get an application or software that stops airtime from being converted to data on the latest smart phones. Unfortunately this cost is passed on to gullible clients like me!

When my nephew returned to office, he got some people to work on it and they promised to do it straight away. This was on Tuesday 29 January 2013.  I explained to the lady that despite my loyalty to Airtel of over 17 years, I would have no option but to move to another provider if my money was not returned! The lady promised to do it in the shortest time so I can enjoy the the service. As I write this piece on 1 February 2013 at 12.21pm, I have not heard from them nor had my airtime reinstated. 

I have refused to buy any more airtime from Airtel and I have moved to Warid.  I can be reached on my Warid number, I replaced 075 with 070, the rest of the numbers remain the same.