Airtel makes a sham about Unsolicited calls - 1909 cant take complaints

Source: Designer in Pajamas

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued "The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010" on 1st December 2010. As per that regulation:

“unsolicited commercial communication” means any commercial communication which a subscriber opts not to receive but does not include , ----
(i) any transactional message; or
(ii) any message transmitted on the directions of central Government or State Government or agencies authorized by it; 

Also, as per the FAQs document from TRAI:

A subscriber who is already registered in the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC) is not required to re-register and his said registration will be valid under the 'fully blocked' category.

I have been registered with the NDNC since 27th August 2007 with a registration number of F1001616897. And yet now when I called up 1909 on Airtel today and checked my status, it says I am not registered!

Why did I happen to check my status today? Because I could not register a complaint against an UCC either on 1909 (there is in fact no option either by calling or via SMS) nor from their web application form at http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/airtel.in/airtel.in/home/do+not+disturb+registry/. Infact when I tried to register a complaint on their website I kept receiving a javascript alert message stating that the date should be current or in the past, though I had chosen properly. A very cheap technique by which an end user is never able to submit the details & thus register a complaint about UCC.

Actual screen capture from my attempts.

TRAI has very clearly stated how customers can register complaints in this document available on their site. And it is via 1909, not a web application form.

Chapter IV of the TRAI's recent regulations state:

(1) Every Access Provider shall set up a facility for registration of the complaint of the customer regarding receipt of unsolicited commercial communications.
(2) The facility set up under sub+regulation (1) shall have short code 1909; Provided that the Authority may specify any other short code, which is assigned by the licensor, from time to time;
(3) The customer complaint registration facility shall be toll free and shall have adequate telecom resources for receipt of customer complaints by way of a voice call or SMS.
(4)  In case any subscriber receives unsolicited commercial communication after expiry of seven days from the date of his registration in the Provider Customer Preference Register under sub+regulation (1) of regulation 7, he may make a complaint to his Access Provider, through voice call or SMS, mentioning therein the particulars of telemarketer, the telephone number from which the unsolicited commercial communication originated,  the date, time and brief description of such unsolicited commercial communication as specified in Schedule VI to these regulations: Provided that every such complaint shall be made by a subscriber within three days of receipt of the unsolicited commercial communication.

I tried calling up 1909 to register a complaint, there was no IVR option for that nor to talk to a customer care executive. Next I tried registering the complaint via SMS to 1909 as per the format prescribed by TRAI:

You may register a complaint regarding receipt of unsolicited commercial communications by sending SMS to 1909  in the specified format given below:
“COMP TEL NO XXXXXXXXXX, dd/mm/yy, Time hh:mm”
Where XXXXXXXXXX – is the telephone number or header of the SMS, as the case may be, from which the unsolicited commercial communication has originated.

I received an SMS in response from 1909 stating: "NO keyword found". Evidently they did not take in complaint registrations via SMS.

So why did I want to register a complaint? Because I received an unsolicited commercial communication from Airtel claiming to be a service call. The caller said that it is a service call from Airtel and that it was to inform me that Airtel's new 3G service has been enabled for my number but I need to enable a rate plan to start using it. (Eh?) Let me clarify that this was not a transactional message and I said that this was not a service call, rather it is a solicitation call. The caller claimed that he was reading from a script and I was handed off to a supervisor who then explained me that since many customers are not aware of their new services in spite of communicating on various channels they call them up to inquire if they would like to avail of the services.

I had in fact opted for Airtel 3G some 3-4 weeks back & because it was not available in my area I discontinued it the same day. On that day I was so pleased with the service I was provided by Airtel.

The caller & the supervisor both were clueless about that episode. So Airtel is siloed, but who isn't, right?

So, to sum up:

1. Airtel called me unsolicited to make a commercial offer under a disguise of a "service call". It was neither a transactional message nor a directive of state/central Government or their agencies; rather asked me to opt for a rate plan, hence an unsolicited commercial communication.
2. Airtel did not transfer me from NDNC to NCPR automatically as per the recent TRAI regulations.
3. Airtel does not provide options to register a complaint on 1909 either by calling or sending an SMS.
4. Airtel's web application form does not allow a person to register a complaint. The web application form is in itself a violation since the complaint has to be registered from the same telephone number on which unsolicited commercial communication has been received.