Postpaid customers have a major drawback as compared to pre-paid customers – they never know what they will be faced with in their bills at the end of the month. Majority of postpaid customers have at one time or other have got nasty surprises in their bills.
And, which are Telco’s that give these surprises to customers the most?
Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Tata Docomo and BSNL seem to have the most problems with regards to the billing patterns. A report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) named “Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators” has reported on the billing pattern of the telecom operators.
As per the rules laid down by TRAI, “not more than 0.1 percent of the total bills raised by a company in a service area should be disputed.” However, the percent of discrepancies reported by various telecom operators were sometime as high 3 times that number, or even higher!
Here are some of the top offenders
| Service provider | State | % of discrepancy | Customers |
| Vodafone | Andhra Pradesh | 0.18 | Postpaid |
| Vodafone | Assam | 0.33 | Postpaid |
| Vodafone | North East | 0.24 | Postpaid |
| Idea | Andhra Pradesh | 0.19 | Postpaid |
| Idea | Gujarat | 0.11 | Postpaid |
| Idea | Kerala | 0.13 | Postpaid |
| BSNL | West Bengal | +1 | Prepaid |
As per TRAI rules, issues raised against the bills by the customers have to be resolved within the time frame of four to six weeks with complete assurance of no further trouble. But however in many telecom circles, this was breached.
BSNL turned to be the most complained about when it came to resolving issues, though most were happy about the company’s billing structure. Speed, connectivity and network issues are the most complained about issues BSNL now has to battle about. This problem was noted in 22 telecom circles in states such as Bihar, UP, North East, West Bengal and Odisha.
This was not only noticed in the public sector telecom company, private telecom operators like Tata Telecommunications, Vodafone and Idea Cellular also resolved issues at a snail’s pace in many telecom circles.
The TRAI report mentioned, “Airtel and BSNL failed to refund charges levied wrongly on consumers within TRAI benchmark of 1 week from the date complaint is resolved.” Though Airtel has been committed to providing high speed mobile internet and strong telecom connection, their customers reported the firm’s failure to refund the amount wrongly charged.
These observations came to light when the government appointed auditors to audit the transparency and the correctness in billing. In the report that was released on 29th January 2015, the auditors have taken many parameters to arrive at the above mentioned figures. We just hope that the telecom operators change their ways in billing and curb excess billing.
Not satisfied with Vodafone postpaid 4g offer, 599rs per month.