violation of consumer rights

Location/place: Mumbai

Name of company/service: Airtel

Complaint: violation of consumer rights
Bill number: 971602105
Sim-card number: 7738364071
We are a research and consulting company based in Mumbai. We are using Airtel corporate sim cards for our employees for the last 5 or so years. Last month we received a bill no. 971602105 for Dec-Jan 2012/13 for the phone number 7738364071 for the amount of INR 112758.57. The itemized bill states that the out of total amount, INR 96920.07 is for roaming charges occurred between 29th Dec 2012 and 8th Jan 2013. We have two concerns regarding the received bill:
• While subscribing to the particular tariff plan, Airtel employees did not inform us about the additional roaming charges. While roaming charges is a common thing, the plan details sent to us by Airtel mention the price shield in the amount of INR 1,500 and there is no mention whatsoever that this shield will not be working on roaming and there was not mention of extent of roaming charges. The communication between us and Airtel while selecting the plan is attached to this complaint.
Not informing the customer regarding hidden and additional costs as well as not informing the customer on exact terms and conditions of the tariff plan when subscribing to it is a clear violation of consumer rights. According to the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 of India, the consumer right to information is defined as ‘the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods or services, as the case may be so as to protect the consumer against unfair trade practices’, which was clearly violated by Airtel in this case.
• The calculation of the bill indicates that the charges occurred due to mobile data usage, namely 140 MB. We do not believe that this is a correct amount of used data, as the used mobile phone was connected to WiFi during the most of the period it was on roaming. In order to be sure how much data was actually used, we need to know the exact sources of traffic by each hour. Airtel itemized bill does not provide this information. According to the above-mentioned Consumer Protection Act we have a full right to receive such information; however we were informed by the Airtel representative that such information cannot be provided due to contractual terms between Airtel and outside providers (in this case T-Mobile Germany). As a consumer, we are not supposed to be worried about terms of agreements between the Telecom operators and are entitled to extensive usage information which has to be provided to us according to the above-mentioned Consumer Protection Act.

We would like to point out these 2 clear violations of consumer rights by Airtel and to contest the bill amount through official and legal means. We are looking forward for Airtel representatives taking care of this situation in a timely and efficient manner.

Axience Consulting Pvt. Ltd.