Airtel Prepaid Mobile... avoid!

mgraube

Just wanted to add my Airtel prepaid experience...

I bought the prepaid card for 540 Rps in Delhi. Got 200 Rps of talk time for that price and the SIM card. Incoming calls were free while I was in Delhi. Now that I'm in Agra, it costs about 6 Rps per minute to receive incoming calls and sometimes I cannot make outgoing calls, depending on where I'm located.

I tried to buy a recharge card today and the men in the store gave me a song and dance about buying "Agra" minutes versus "Delhi" minutes. Basically, you have pay a little more to buy more minutes, for example 810 Rps buys you 600 Rps of talk time because there is an included service fee for the recharge. Don't believe the stores when they say that 800 Rps is only worth 450 Rps of talk time or something less- they are just trying to make some extra "fees" for their service. Check the airtel prepaid web site for the rates.

I found that if I wrote down the store's quoted prices and told them that I might come back later after I thought about it, their quoted prices suddenly dropped to the real value and they showed me the actual printed prices on the card. Otherwise they will just try to take advantage of you.

Hope this is useful if you decide to buy a prepaid card. It is probably best to recharge your card before you start roaming to avoid this hassle.

timmy

My original post here was based on frustration. Living in Australia, I am not accustomed to internal roaming because the providers refuse to share their networks. So if you are with Vodafone (or a Vodafone reseller) for example, you can travel anywhere in the country and if Vodafone has no coverage where you go then tough luck. Fortunately all the GSM network providers have excellent coverage pretty much nationwide.

Having worked in marketing, I am used to the idea that you have to assume that your customers are clueless. So if you say "incoming calls free" with no disclaimer then it's quite possible that your customers will assume that incoming calls are free with no exclusions or exceptions, just as I did.

In any case I just saved myself the trouble this time and left my phone at home.

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Read my India Travel Blog from late 2004, or look at my Photo Gallery from my last two trips.