Like a movie sequel , my Airtel  prepaid balance is  again being debited for  Rs 3  for Thought for the day service to which I have never subscribed.

In June I was facing this Airtel prepaid problem and after repeated follow up, I managed to get a refund.  Now in the space of  30 minutes my account has been debited for Rs 12 for a VAS service to which I never subscribed.  It seems that millions of Airtel subscribers are facing this problem,  if no immediate action is taken, it is better to go to the consumer court. They refunded the Rs 12  initially and  I switched off the mobile.

But now my account has been debited for Rs 45 since then and I continue to receive the unsolicited SMS messages from 290603. It seems all Airtel subscribers are facing this problem.  I have been trying to find out if there is a mobile phone virus which could be causing this problem,  but it appears unlikely since I only have a basic mobile phone model.  I have written to customer support and will publish the correspondence here soon.

Sending an email to the nodal officer is also not of much use. Now I am getting an error message

Your message

Subject: Mobile no **** – Incorrect billing

was not delivered to:

Nodalofficer.Mumbai@airtel.in

because:

Error delivering to Nodalofficer Mumbai/SERVICE EXCELLENCE/Mum/Airtel/BTVL; Router: Database disk quota exceeded

One would have thought that India’s  largest mobile service provider could afford more hard disk space on their servers.  Before buying foreign companies like MTN,  why don’t they put their  VAS  and billing systems in order? I have wasted so much time trying to get a refund and there are so many customers who are facing a similar problem.

Update : After repeated follow up  and sending emails to 121@airtelindia.com , I got 3 refunds of  Rs 12, Rs 45 and Rs 3 each .  I hope Airtel is able to fix this problem permanently.