There is one thing I’ll miss from that Airtel line though, it was one of those easy to remember numbers that some businesses would pay a premium value for. But after having this card for over a year I am finally very tired with Airtel. I am not a story teller so hear are the three reasons for my decision to throw the card down the trench:
1. Last week I traveled to Nairobi and spent the night at a friend’s place. I’ve always known that his house is destitute of Safaricom network so for the sake of being online, I switched to Airtel. What a stupid decision; the place has zero network signal on Airtel. When I switched back to Safaricom I was surprised that Safaricom’s signal was of full strength.
2. Ever since Airtel announced the Vurumisha Mamili na Airtel I have been receiving two to three text messages per day reminding me to participate in the promotion. Airtel should know that those interested in participating don’t need more than one reminder the entire, ever.
3. My wife has been complaining of Airtel’s questionable airtime deductions every so often. Though I told her that she could have subscribed to some services or Internet offers, her statement that Airtel doesn’t bother to unsubscribe her from any services she might have accidentally subscribed to means that Airtel does not care about customers’ complains.
4. The fact that Airtel does not care about customers complains cannot be understated. Just the other day I asked Safaricom to remove one of my numbers from auto-buy bundles mode. The customer care from Safaricom called me in less than a minute to inform me that my request had been successfully completed. The number of times I have asked Airtel to stop sending me non-stop messages and to stop calling me with their press *#$%* music request for caller tunes is uncountable. These nugus (pun intended) don’t just listen.
5. Lastly Airtel customer care services is the poorest; be it at the customer care centers that have no lines or via free-tall lines that never go through, the one thing they are perfect at is to leave customers’ sadder than before. Early this year I took my Samsung ch@t 222 to Airtel Nakuru to be enabled to access Airtel Internet but the “geek” could not do it. I had to do a lot of Googling in order to personally set the damn Internet on the phone from the Internet settings they have never stopped sending.
6. Lastly, ever since I bought and shared the Airtel number to friends and foes, no one has bothered calling me on that number, not even those using Airtel. Somehow guys just don’t like Airtel, why should I?
By the way Airtel is currently the most expensive Mobile Service Provider if they increased their rates as they had threatened in late August. Sorry I did not take time to confirm their current rates.
So, other than good roaming rates, what is it that Airtel is proud of?