Dear Airtel,
As it stands I have spend over many many hours calling, writing, tweeting, requesting, pleading and shouting at you. Every time I have to go through the same process of talking to your army of customer care representatives who pass me around like a prostitute on New Year ’s Eve. If you enjoy making your customers feel like your bitch, then congratulations. You will be glad to know that I indeed feel like Airtel's bitch. The reason for my being enraged is that even a prostitute, at the end of the day receives her (or his, so as not to sound gender biased) payment, which sadly, despite my pleading with your entire customer care in Bangalore, Delhi, Noida, Mumbai and whichever other place you have setup your fine organization, has not been the case.
Since I am sure that this mail will be read (and hopefully will entertain) another one of your army, whom, by the way, I am slowly getting intimately acquainted with (a shout out to Ankit, Santhosh, Lal, Vijay etc. Hope the wife and kids received the chocolates I sent them for Diwali), I shall start from the very beginning. I live in a modest little apartment in Frazer Town in Bangalore and since broadband connections seem to be as hard to come by in this locality of Bangalore as common sense is in India, I am always greedily gullible enough to take the word of every airtel broadband representative promising the riches of the superlative airtel broadband experience. Whilst other operators have the temerity to say that it is impossible for them to provide broadband lines, the brave warriors at airtel proclaim to do what those other cowardly bastard operators cannot. As long as some of their palms are greased (please do not misinterpret this as a sexual phrase), they can provide me with a connection and the lost city of Atlantis to boot. Sadly, once the down payment is complete and the palms of your munificent employees (or contractors?) greased, they disappear quicker than a teenager being informed of his girlfriend’s pregnancy. This has happened to me a grand total of 3 (or is it 4, I've lost count now). Continuing with my analogy, this is the fourth bastard that I’ll be fathering. This is how I have become such a close member of the already close-knit Airtel family. I call, I share, I implore, I threaten, I plead with your family whom I have now grown to love.
This last time, however, the Airtel family seems to have disowned me from my newly adopted family. They refuse to pay me my own hard earned money (a paltry sum of Rs. 500, in solely non-punitive damages). I have done a quick calculation that if I include my precious time (at the rate I bill my clients) that has gone into talking, pleading, shouting, writing, tweeting etc. and of course my own money that I have spent on bribes, internet charges, telephone charges etc it comes to well over Rs. 3560.
If you have come to this point of the letter, I would like to thank you for your patience, and pray that I might have entertained and perhaps even have guilted you ever so slightly. I would also like to thank you for having introduced me to most of your wonderful family and trust that I shall some day run into one of the people that I have grown to love.
As a final request, I should like to make the pending amount of Rs. 500 to the Airtel family's employee welfare trust. It seems to me that Airtel could do with the money and during difficult times families should look after one another.
An Airtel'er for life,
Ravi Sundaresan
Dear Airtel,
As it stands I have spend over many many hours calling, writing, tweeting, requesting, pleading and shouting at you. Every time I have to go through the same process of talking to your army of customer care representatives who pass me around like a prostitute on New Year ’s Eve. If you enjoy making your customers feel like your bitch, then congratulations. You will be glad to know that I indeed feel like Airtel's bitch. The reason for my being enraged is that even a prostitute, at the end of the day receives her (or his, so as not to sound gender biased) payment, which sadly, despite my pleading with your entire customer care in Bangalore, Delhi, Noida, Mumbai and whichever other place you have setup your fine organization, has not been the case.
Since I am sure that this mail will be read (and hopefully will entertain) another one of your army, whom, by the way, I am slowly getting intimately acquainted with (a shout out to Ankit, Santhosh, Lal, Vijay etc. Hope the wife and kids received the chocolates I sent them for Diwali), I shall start from the very beginning. I live in a modest little apartment in Frazer Town in Bangalore and since broadband connections seem to be as hard to come by in this locality of Bangalore as common sense is in India, I am always greedily gullible enough to take the word of every airtel broadband representative promising the riches of the superlative airtel broadband experience. Whilst other operators have the temerity to say that it is impossible for them to provide broadband lines, the brave warriors at airtel proclaim to do what those other cowardly bastard operators cannot. As long as some of their palms are greased (please do not misinterpret this as a sexual phrase), they can provide me with a connection and the lost city of Atlantis to boot. Sadly, once the down payment is complete and the palms of your munificent employees (or contractors?) greased, they disappear quicker than a teenager being informed of his girlfriend’s pregnancy. This has happened to me a grand total of 3 (or is it 4, I've lost count now). Continuing with my analogy, this is the fourth bastard that I’ll be fathering. This is how I have become such a close member of the already close-knit Airtel family. I call, I share, I implore, I threaten, I plead with your family whom I have now grown to love.
This last time, however, the Airtel family seems to have disowned me from my newly adopted family. They refuse to pay me my own hard earned money (a paltry sum of Rs. 500, in solely non-punitive damages). I have done a quick calculation that if I include my precious time (at the rate I bill my clients) that has gone into talking, pleading, shouting, writing, tweeting etc. and of course my own money that I have spent on bribes, internet charges, telephone charges etc it comes to well over Rs. 3560.
If you have come to this point of the letter, I would like to thank you for your patience, and pray that I might have entertained and perhaps even have guilted you ever so slightly. I would also like to thank you for having introduced me to most of your wonderful family and trust that I shall some day run into one of the people that I have grown to love.
As a final request, I should like to make the pending amount of Rs. 500 to the Airtel family's employee welfare trust. It seems to me that Airtel could do with the money and during difficult times families should look after one another.
An Airtel'er for life,
Ravi Sundaresan
tickels blue flycatcher
stork billed kingfisher
stone plover
spot billed pelican
spot billed pelicans
spoon-billed stork
River tern family
purple heron
pelican scape
painted stork
open billed stork
Asian paradise flycatcher
