airtelkenya.com

Drain of credit

This happened twice. On February of 2024 I bought KSH 200 of credit and used KSH 50 for Internet bundles, after a week went by of not using my credit at all, meaning never texted anyone, never turned on my data and never made any outgoing calls. I lost KSH 94 and I never made a big deal about it because it never happened again. On the 28th of May when I reloaded a total of KSH 460, used KSH 43 for calling and texting and KSH 70 for bundles. Left it until the 31st of May when I wanted to check my balance which only read KSH 97. I was very much confused because a chunk of KSH 250 was clearly missing, I immediately decided to call the 100 number and spoke to a representative, he bogged it down to me having the active data manager switched off resulting in the draining of my credit. I explained how I never turned on my data or used the credit for anything, he never believed me and just hang up. I then when to check the status on my active data manager which Airtel themselves sent a message saying that my active data manager is already active. I called back the 100 number and got another person(female this time round) She claimed that I had turned on my active data manager by talking to the previous person. Despite me not asking him to do that at all or me doing that, she then said that her end shows that I clearly drained my own credit, she hung up and was nicer than the last person. I went to my data usage history on my phone to check if what they say is true, fortunately for me the phone showed that 0 MB was used from the SIM card between the 28th of May and 31st of May. I downloaded two separate third party apps which showed the same results, the only source of Internet between those dates was Wi-Fi based on the usage not the SIM card. I first emailed them on the 1st of June with screenshots of my settings between the 28th of May and 31st of May and the data usage also explaining that I'djust want a refund of the credit drained between those the 28th of May and 31st of May. I got a call back from their +254733100000 number which lasted 7 minutes long. The call was essentially them accusing me for making up screenshots and their side is the only empirically valid option that says I drained all my credit by myself. I asked if a screen recording or a video recording of my phone settings and data usage itself would suffice but he declined and blocked and when I tried to plea with him to simply look at what my phone says, he just hang up mid conversation. I sent the phone recordings and screen recordings and after trying to call the 100 number and the +254733100000 number I just get a invalid number, meaning I was blocked. I have around KSH 49 left on my Airtel, I plan on using all of it in a few minutes then just destroying my Airtel SIM card. As much as Safaricom is expensive, atleast they don't do such things. I would rather take an expensive, reliable and cooperative customer experience than ones that are cheap/affordable, unreliable and a customer care system that is only there to tell you how to give them more money

Date of experience: May 31, 2024