Airtel billing woes

I have an airtel broadband connection at my flat. I have been using their services for close to 3 months now and I am really surprised at their lack of system integration. For those who do not know, Airtel is the biggest private telecom player in India and provides a host of services - landline, mobile, corporate , broadband and they are also launching IPTV in India by the end of 2007. Their telecom services have been growing rapidly which is also reflected by the growth in their stock price (close to 650% in the last 3 years).

Coming back to the main subject of this post - billing woes. I am a tech-savvy person and prefer using internet for paying bills wherever possible. I receive and pay my electricity, credit card, dmat account and mobile bills online. I just don't like receiving bills in hardcopy and writing cheques for payment. I consider it a waste of time and precious paper. Now the problem with airtel - my billing address is my office address and so if I want to collect my bill, I have to go to another building and wade through a pile of mails to locate my bill which is something I hate. So I want my bill online. Last month, I called airtel customer care and asked them to email a copy of the bill. I received a postive response and was told that it would be done in a couple of hours. It never happened. I called atleast 5 times asking them to send the email and they just could not do it. In the end, they sent a person to my home to collect the cheque.

Today, I called them for the last month's bill. The customer service executive told me that I would receive my bill (by courier) by 10th. I asked him to email it and predictably he said that he was sorry about it and that I can wait till 10th and if I don't receive my bill by then, they will initiate the email process. Going by my last experience, I am sure its not going to happen. So now I am mentally prepared for a visit by a friendly airtel cheque collector!!!

Have you experienced something like this???