Airtel promises to deliver and activate connection in 2 hours. But, can they do it even in 24 hours? Or 48 hours? Or even 72 hours? At least once they take the request into their systems and send a message that your number will be activated within 24 hours, they should follow it. Or they will surely lose the trust of people and will get a huge hit. I am not sure if TRAI has anything to do with misleading Ads.

I wanted a better looking number to be printed in the card and went to Airtel. Their online site displays few numbers, some are free and others range from 1500 to 15000 (as I could see, but may be more for some other numbers). However many numbers are not available directly from Airtel as they are blocked by their outside vendor partners. I wanted a number, but Airtel store confirmed that it is blocked by outside vendor. One such partner had this number listed in their website.

I raised a request online, and after some follow ups, the agent came, collected documents and fancy number fee, and gave the sim. He said the connection will be activated within 24 hours. Next day, I could learn from Airtel that the papers were not even submitted and they raised a complaint with ref no as SR73726167. Later the team submitted documents to Airtel and got it entered into their systems. From the outside agencies terms, this was fine as they say it may take upto 5 days.

I got a mail from Airtel to my alternate number that the request is in process and will be activated within 24 hours on 25/Jan/2017. 24 hours passed by and nothing happened. So total time I  spent has crossed 48. In between, I had got a message in my new SIM stating my new number and to restart it. Once I restarted, the network vanished. Then a customer care rep asked me to call device activation hotline and do televerification, which I did too. Nothing happened, even though the system told my connection will be active in 30 minutes.

Again, 24 hours went by and my total wait now has crossed 72 hours. Another agent again raised another complaint with ref no as 73762671 and said address verification is pending with external agency. Asked me to go to the Airtel store. When I went to the store, they told me that it is pending address verification and they cannot do anything. I already have another Airtel with verified address and I had provided my driving license too which had local address.

Both store and 121 told that address verification is done by external team and they don’t have any way to follow up. I understood that it will be done if I am lucky, or it can take any number of days. If they can’t do it within their SLA they may simple cancel the ticket giving any lame reasons. In Summary, I am still waiting for an Airtel connection for the number for more than 72 hours (and counting) after submitting the documents.

If Airtel does not have any control over the activation time or verification agencies, should Airtel advertise to give connection in 2 hours? I might be missing something here, but at least once they send a message that connection will be activated within 24 hours and nothing happens within that time, they should send an update with a valid reason. 

Update as on 27/Jan/2016 5.30 PM

Connection got activated after sharing this post. The outside agency had tried its part to get this activated fast, but from systems perspective this could have been better if it was faster.