Indian telecom major Airtel scams its customers and increases the cost of call rates. The ads are misleading and the sole purpose of the ad and promotion is to cheat innocent users. The lame marketing tricks are aimed only to dupe its customers.

Airtel had launched the India One product a few days back with heavy publicity. I was surprised when I saw Airtel offering such low calling plans. The India One product cost about $9.99, $3.99 was rental and $6 was talktime. So effectively speaking it was not 1 cent per minute, but 1.67 cents a minute. However, it was still good with the user getting 600 minutes for $10 a month.

However, this was just their plan to trick users into their user base. True to their colors, they have discontinued the old plan and introduced two new plans, “India One MAX” and “India One NEO”.

The plan features are as follows; (taken from their website)

“IndiaOne Max comes to you at $14.99, with a rental of $8.99 and Talktime worth $6.00. You get an unbelievable rate of 1c/min when you call using Local Access. This is applicable on any call terminating on mobile phone in India i.e. you get 600 mins in just $14.99 on local access.

You need to use the minutes within 30 days of buying the product. If you call using the toll free number the rate is still an attractive 2 c/min. So hurry…Sign up NOW !”

“India One Neo comes to you at $6.49, with a rental of $3.99 and Talktime worth $2.50. You get an incredible rate of 1c/min when you call using Local Access. This is applicable on any call terminating on mobile phone in India i.e. you get 250 mins in just $6.49 on local access.

You need to use the minutes within 15 days of buying the product. If you call using the toll free number the rate is still an attractive 2.33 c/min on calls to mobile phones. So hurry…Sign up NOW !”

How great are these offers. The original plan was for $9.99 for 600 minutes and 30 days. India One MAX is 50% more expensive and India One NEO is 100% more expensive.

All they care about is cheating people with clearly crafted words. I am pasting the email I got from Airtel below.

Dear Customer,

Hope you are enjoying the benefit of 1cent/min rate with us!!

Thank you for making India One such a huge success.

We have been listening to all your feedback and suggestions very carefully. Keeping
those in mind, we have launched two new exciting products – India One MAX and India
One NEO.

Please see the details below:

To know more about these products please click here

With the launch of these two new products, erstwhile India One product will no longer be
available for sale from 5^th May 2009 (00:00:01 hrs, IST) onwards. To protect your
interests, we will not process any auto topup transaction on India-One too.

If you still have India One product, it will continue to work smoothly till the expiry
date/till you have balance. All the features of India One will work as is, except for
Auto Topup.

Thanks for being a part of Airtel CallHome family and continue enjoying India calling at
1 cent/min.

Best wishes,
Team Airtel CallHome

Should you require any further clarity or have any suggestions, please write to us at
customersupport@airtelcallhome.com. We are listening.

Who, on earth, would advise them to increase their rates by 50 – 100%? Are they really listening to their customers? Hell no. I am cancelling the subscription as soon as it expires and would never go to Airtel again. Airtel is out there to cheat everyone and earn money. Your lame tricks are not going to work against me.

The effective call rate of airtel call home card is 2.5 cents and 2.6 cents per minute. When will they stop giving misleading ads and try to cheat its customers. Don’t they have the moral obligation to be honest?

Update:

Airtel customer care calls me to offer again their so called 1 cents per minute offer. When I say no, they now tell that “Airtel keeps changing their plan every month, if you take now, next month we are going to offer you 1500 minutes for $15.”

He was right, Airtel keeps changing the plan every month and that is only to increase the rates. You got to do better than that next time to get me back. And if you are really offering me 1500 minutes for $15, then go ahead and call me. If not, where can I put to remove my number from your f***ing calling list.