Airtel
Unauthorized charge on credit card

I am writing to share my frustrating experience with Airtel in the US: I registered & bought a talk time card for $5 in Dec06. When i received my credit card statement, I found that not only did they charge me $5 but they also charged another $50 on my credit card without my confirmation. I called on 30 Dec06 the helpline & I was given the SR Number: 285551 with a promise that they would get back to me earliest.

After waiting for 1 month & not hearing from them through mail or phone called them & was assured of resolution - they said they will get back in a month. I patiently waited for 2 months and called them back on 02 April07. They filed a case SR number: 358802 and promised to help. But nobody called or mailed.

On this day i also closed the account. They gave me a refund of $5 but the actual issue of debiting my account with $50 for which i was following up for so long was still not resolved.

On April 26th, we got very frustrated and called/emailed them. They asked us to send the transaction details which we sent them. We gave them the Transaction Date: 8th December Transaction Amt: $50 & the reference number.in our credit card statement it clearly shows that the transaction was done by "BHARTIAIRTE 877 247 5150 NY 4029357733 Description CELLULAR TELEPHONE".

To this they sent a reply saying that they had refunded an amount of $5 to us already. [This was not even our issue - our issue was about the extra $50 that they had charged us]. We were all the while following up about the $50 which they had debited to our account without our permission and they replied about something else.

Now, having gone through all this-we called our credit card company to dispute this charge of $50 but since the number of days since the txn is more than 90 days they said it wouldn't be able to help.

I fail to understand how a company like AIRTEL would be so irresponsible and be so unethical in answering a consumer complaint. They first ignored the customer for a long time and then they responded to a wrong issue, and now they refuse to take any responsibility of the txn.

Company: Airtel
Country: USA

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