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Airtel Allows NRIs to Call Home at 7.9 Cents

By: Sharon Khare | Dec 07, 2006

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Bharti Airtel, has announced its foray into the United States of America with the launch of Airtel CallHome service for the 2.5 Million Non Resident Indians based there who will now be able to call their loved ones back in India at 7.9 cents a minute.

Those interested will have to go to the Airtel website, create their personal account and download the calling service online.

Manoj Kohli, President Bharti Airtel Ltd., said, "Geography is history as they say. We are glad to be causing this paradigm shift. We have over 2.5 million Non Resident Indians in the United States who make over 450 million minutes of calls a month to their loved ones back here in India. We Indians are very expressive and emotional and love to connect with our near and dear ones. It makes me immensely happy that Airtel will dissolve the geographical boundaries and help people connect to their friends and family back here in India."

Airtel maintains that this service comes at 40 percent less in terms of pricing and offers a uniform rate of calling whether it is to any Airtel mobile or Landline or any other mobile phone or landline.

Vinod Sawhny, joint president, Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel Limited said on the occasion, "It is a proud moment for us at Bharti Airtel as we make our first foray into the US market with Airtel CallHome service. The Enterprise Services SBU was created to address the needs of customers in India through the Corporates division as well as across continents through our Carriers division. This foray marks an important milestone in the Bharti Airtel journey and with this we bring the triple proposition of reduced rates, ease & convenience of using this service and unmatched call quality to our fellow Indians in the USA."

Available initially on pre-paid option, the payments for pre-paid recharges will be accepted through credit card on the web portal. Customers have the freedom to choose their mode of managing their personal accounts either through the Internet, Airtel Call Center or through a local toll-free access number that can be accessed across the continent from any phone.

Tags: [ Airtel ]

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may they are giving the good service for calling india, but the customer care and website is hell. better they drop the website instead of contnuing with working.

vijay @ Nov 07, 2007

Airtel Call Home is FRAUD !! Never use it. This morning (Oct-11-2007) they launched promotional offer which would give 100% free talk time (so $5 recharge would give $10 talk time). I recharged at 7:00 AM EST on Oct-11 and came to know that offer was dis-continued on same day due to Business Reasons !!

Call center is saying offer was withdrawn on 1:00 PM IST time and I recharged around 4:00 PM IST time under that offer.. There website says some thing and some thing else would happen in back groud..

They are here to fool people.. stay away from them

-D @ Oct 12, 2007

I have used many callingcards, but I have never came across as useless calling card like that of airtel. The call gets dropped every now and then.

Moreover, for getting my account activated, I had to call their customer service and after endless number of calls, came across a guy who said to call later as their system was down. You can easily judge the performance of their calling card if you try to visit their site which is down or tortoise slow most of the times.

Please go for reliance, its a more than 100% better bet and a value for money.

Ravi @ Apr 18, 2007

I am using Reliance, Airtel , Dimondcard, Reliablecom, Amantel and some other cards to call my family and friends in india. Airtel gives AMAZING CLARITY over all other services!. even an average man can find out this clarity very quickly but connectivity is a problem in peak hours at the weekend.

Felix @ Mar 05, 2007

The worst horrible website and customer service from Airtel. First of all their website is broken on most of the pages. I tried to lookup my payment details. It said no data available. I tried to print an earlier recharge receipt. It sais not available try again later.
I then made a recharge of 25.00 and website had been showing “Please wait while we process your payment”…for more than 20 minutes.
I finally called customer service and they said there is nothing they can do about it and I need to wait 8 hours to a day and then recheck if my account has been updated. (its been 30 minutes now since I clicked submit on the charge page). the voice quality of the calls is good but the website is a nightmare.

samir @ Feb 24, 2007

AIRTEL CALL HOME IS A FRAUD. DO NOT USE IT.

Hi Airtel is a complete Fraud.

1) Very poor customer service 2) Fraudulent Accounting practices

They gave double talk time to begin with, but soon i found that for every call they were charging me twice. I have logged a complaint number 325500 with airtel. I cant believe i switched from Reliance.

The customer service told me that they see the double charges but that is due to some missing calls from the system. FRAUD again.

AIRTEL CALL HOME IS A FRAUD. DO NOT USE IT.

I AM GOING TO STICK TO RELIANCE.

vineet gupta @ Feb 14, 2007

I am still using the service. The web site is very bad you cannot login to the site to make any updates.
Airtell should spend mony in making good web-site than giving money to the stars. I did not find any issues with the using their phone service.

Manoj @ Feb 13, 2007

I registered with Airtel in January 1st week. It is working very good for me. No problems at all. Connection is good and call quality is good. Looks like they rectified all problems that their customers are having. Keep up the good work AIRTEL.

srinivas @ Jan 16, 2007

Pathetic is too good to describe the service quality. I joined 3 weeks back and so far was able to place one call. The customer service number is always busy. Email complaint generated a response that did not even relate to my complaint. I am sticking to Reliance. My only goal now is to get my money back. When Reliance started their service, they offered free minutes to test their service. I can understand why Airtel did not take the risk.

Ramana @ Jan 11, 2007

The service is new and so far pathetic. Customer care number does not work, website is slow and does not work correctly for various options. Unable to get India #'s.Their phone service is not working from last 48 hours.

One word-PATHETIC

Srini Chinmaya @ Jan 07, 2007

Obviously Airtel jumped into this market without much preparations. However, the rate is extremely good. Reliance is making an attempt not to lose customers by giving a similar but inferior promo, but Airtel is their worst enemy with so many problems.

I signed up today. Seems like they are getting a grip over their problems now, well kind of.

When I clicked submit, I got the message that the credit card authorisation was rejected. Called airtel and got the rep very quickly. She said that there was a denial, but the account has been charged. So I tried to login, but could not login in the website.

The good thing is, I tried making a call and there was no problem and the clarity was great. Hopefully the problems will be rectified and we have a worthy competitor to reliance

David @ Jan 06, 2007

It is worst service I have ever seen. Bharti Airtel did no dues any pre work before launching the long distance call service. It is nont user friendly and does not work most of the time. I am trying to dispute the charges with my credit card company and get the funds back..

Dushyant Sethi @ Dec 24, 2006

I tried to use their service, their CU support is very very very worst, their webpage is also worst, they charge the credit card but the balance won't appear on your a/c... I have been trying to call their CU care number(1877 247 5150), it's been a week no success yet, it's either busy or if it gets connected, nobody will be there to pick up the phone. Two times I was on hold for more than 45 minutes... They don't have a courtesy to reply to e-mails also.... Refrain from using their service/calling plan. It sucks big time...

anonymous @ Dec 18, 2006

I am in Phoenix, USA and I registered yestarday and till today I have not been able to make a SINGLE call. It always says "All circuit are busy. Will you please try you call again later" . Looks like Airtel forgot to switch the service ON or may be thier infrastructure is not capable of handling the volume/load...AIRTEL can you look into this ...Even the 24 x7 customer service number will never get you to the agent. Emails sent to AIRTEL customer service were never responded back to me..Initially they were bouncing back with an disk quota error. I am extremely disappointed after "registering to AIRTEL CALL HOME SERVICE...I have switched back over to Reliance @12.99 cents per minute. However my money is stuck with AIRTEL.

Sundeep Jaiswal @ Dec 17, 2006

It is a great service that airtel has started at a very competitive rate. Having said that I think at this point airtel is just charging money from credit cards and not allowing to make any calls yet. The customer service on the call india website is not working at all and as I said the only thing that is working is the credit card payment gateway. I have paid to airtel but I cannot make any phone calls. I cannot reach to any one also in airtel. I just want to make everyone else aware of the situation so that they dont get into the trap.

Neeraj Nagpal @ Dec 17, 2006

I sincerely saying please donot go and register through airtelcallhome site. This is number one fraud site as their customer service never worked always busy tone I was charge on to all of my creditcards without completion of full registration

Prasad @ Dec 17, 2006

Stay AWAY!!! This is cheating at its best. There customer service number or toll free number, nothing works. I am amazed how can a company like AirTel can belatently do such a shameful thing. I hope some sues AirTel before lot many people suffer.

Eswar @ Dec 17, 2006

Airtell's service is new and so far pathetic. Customer care number does not work, website is slow and does not work correctly for various options. Their phone service is not working from last 24 hours.

s prakash @ Dec 17, 2006

Good that Airtel gives at 7.9 Cents.

But,

1) You don't get the Airtel line, its always engaged.
2) The online System is pathetic. Its Slow and it takes hell a lot of time to get some thing done
3) Customer Service, i am not sure whether the number they had given is correct. Since i was never given a chance to talk to them. Always engaged !!!!

One real good thing about this is,

1) They are very fast in charging money from your Card.

My weekend morning is gone with this stupid Online registration, trying to call Customer Rep.....But in Vain.....

Still you wanna try "AirtelCallHome"......

better Airtel can rename the site to "Airtel-Call-Home-If-You-Can" !!!!

Hope Airtel corrects all these issues soon....then its worth using their service

SomeOneInUSA @ Dec 16, 2006

The customer service number doesn't work, the website is painfully slow and buggy and no one responds to the emails. Overall it seems to be an unprofessional organization and will not be able to compete with the likes of reliance comm.

Abhishek @ Dec 16, 2006

The website doesnot work at all. I went for sign up and after filling up all the details, the website comes up with an error saying my sign up failed and my card was not charged. On furtehr inquiry I found out that the card was charged!! The customer service is always busy even at 4AM EST!! The feedback link on website comes up with error and the email is defunct!! I hope they take care of all this and save all emotional NRIs all this trauma!

Ajay @ Dec 16, 2006

I would like to bring to your kind notice the kind of service Airtel is providing. I have subscribed Airel CallHome service 5 days back. While subscribing I did not receive any kind of confirmation that the payment has been made with a receipt or any sort of transaction id. But the money was deducted form my card. This is a pure non compliance of US SoX compliance act. In US all transactions should be accountable and transparent. Till now I have not received even a single mail or communication about the registration or the payment made and the number has not been allocated yet. When I called the customer service number it is always busy. How the hell could a customer service number be busy instead of putting on queue. Im going to sue Airtel if they do not get back in two days.

Sowdesh @ Dec 16, 2006

It sucks.. I have registered myself into this. Unable to make any calls as it always says sorry please call again. Customer service number never works.

Deepesh @ Dec 16, 2006

I'm really fed up with Airtel call home. They have a 24x7 Customer Care No. (1-877-247-5150) which is always busy. I haven't seen any toll free number where u hear a engaged tone always. I got connected to it once but again they put me on hold (The usual-CSR's are busy) for more than 45 mins and i had to cut the call out of frustration. The website (www.airtelcallhome.com) is the most poor website i have ever seen. The login page has problems even if you enter your correct credentials. Gosh! Its very very slow. It says Fetching account details and doesnt trun up at all. When you try to register your no's it says update registration failed for no reason. Everything sucks. I love Airtel in india. But the International call needs lot of development esp when the compete with RelianceIndiacall.

Arun @ Dec 15, 2006

Poor customer service! As soon as i signed up giving all the credit card information, there was no email. The 24 x 7 customer care number 1-877-247-5150 does not work. I have been getting a busy signal for the last 4 days. I recently found that my credit card got charged but have not got any email from airtel. Please try to call the customer care number to directly register. Hope you get their line. Wish me good luck too.

N Vaidya @ Dec 14, 2006

The service seems to be very poor. I registered on their website 3 days ago and i was supposed to receive a confirmation email with my user id and pin but i have not received it yet. My credit card was charged though. I tried calling the customer number but i always get a busy signal. The complaints/query/feedback form on their web site does not seem to work either.

Ankur @ Dec 14, 2006

The website is very disgusting ... I tried to register at least 10 times, every time it is saying registration unsucessfull becuase credit card transaction failed. We are using credit since last 10 years .. Don't tell me how to use it. If you have specific way to enter the information you should post on the site. And tried to call customer service, always busy tone .. You might say high volume of calls ... Bulshit .. Forget it ...

XYZ @ Dec 14, 2006

This is a very pathetic service from airtel. I have registered for $50 and after using it for just $1.82, now i am unable to make any other call to india. After dialling the a/c no. And pin code, it asks you to enter the phone no. And when i enter the phone no. It says that "the no. Could not be connected, please dial once again". When i dial the same no. Once again, it disconnects your call with a message that "the no. You entered is invalid". I tried to call the customer support and that no. Too doesn't get connected. I would advise that no one registers for this service. A strict no.

Sufferer @ Dec 12, 2006

Who says it works? I signed up earlier today and paid $25 through credit card. I never got any confirmation email from them to start my account, that i was told i would get. The toll free no. They have for customer service is an eye-wash.... You will never get it. It is busy 24/7. May be it doesn't work at all. I didn't expect this kind of stuff from airtel!!!

romesh trisal @ Dec 12, 2006

The service has been very unplesant and horrible. It has been 3 days since i signed up and i have not recd the username and passwd . Even after many call to cust care the issue is not solved. My 2 cents please stay away till the service quality is fixed.

bharat @ Dec 12, 2006

For the benefit all users, the account registration form on airtelworld portal has a lot of defects. Infact in my case i enetered all relevant details correctly and it gav mw an error message user registered but telephone number not accpeted, please correct the telephone number when you loin. But the catch is i cant login without the telephone number. :( i have lost the $25 from my account. Tried calling the customer service but no response. Sent a mail to the customer service - but no response. Please be care ful.

Nikhil @ Dec 11, 2006

We are struggling to get it registered for this service. Though we enter valid / sufficient details, it throws error while registering.
it throws the below error.
"please enter valid inputs in the mandatory fields marked as '*'
while trying to register a complaint in the feedback, the same above error is being displayed.
unable to reach anybody from the customer care # 1-877-247-5150.

we were delighted by the airtel service back in india, but is there anyone to look into this matter from airtel??

Senthil @ Dec 11, 2006

The experience with registering thier website is very unfriendly.
after registration,even after waiting for a day i couldn't get e-mail conformation which contains the username and password.I tried calling up their 24 hours customer service no.1-877-247-5150 and i always get a engage sound with no connectivity.After trying many times i got to speak to them and got my username and password.

mean while since i couldn't get on to thier cutomer service no,i tried filing a complaint through their "contct us" page and i am very surprised that i cannot submit any thing.

next difficulty i had is registering for pinless dailing and it says there is some difficulty adding this.I don't know what it is.My service is cingular.

i sent them a en-mail about this and there is no response.

weird site guys.Stay way from it atleast untill they act responsibly or until you hear from somebody.

widad @ Dec 11, 2006

This services is waste. These people want to catch the indians who make call to india .
i registered for this service and website is too slow.With 8 mbps connection.
when i tried to register my phone numbers it's giving an error say " unknown error occured" and i tried to call fucking customer care put on hold for more than an hour lost patience cut the line.

this service is no good.

ignore don't fool for low cost and brand name. Not at all comparable with some low cheap calling cards to india.Try to use relaince for now until these people gets improved

basha manik basha @ Dec 09, 2006

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