Airtel Call Home India calling card Review : Part 1

Airtel Call Home or Airtel India calling card plan has been one of the most searched internet calling card. On one hand people want to try out the new service as its from Airtel and on the other hand we received loads of complaints about this phone card. Needless to say, Airtel does not live upto the expectation.

Shahrukh Khan advertisements all over the Indian channels announced the launch of a new calling card for Indians who call home using phone cards. Airtel Call Home India calling cards. We have signed up for an account and tested its service. Heres the good part and then the bad part.

First the good part. Its much cheaper than Reliance India Call Calling cards. RelianceIndiaCall is around 13 cents for US to India call, while Air Tel phone cards charges you just 8 cents per minute. And in addition to that if you signup or recharge your account immediately, you will get double the minutes.. so if you reading this before January 31st 2007, you can be calling India at 4cents a minute. Its a good competition for Reliance India call which was the best service till Airtel came into the picture. The call quality is great, comparable to reliance india call. You can dial pinless .. and calls to mobile phones are also the same rate. Airtel Call Home has tollfree for both customer support and for connecting your call. So enjoy !!

The brand image of Airtel and their brand ambassador Shahrukh will surely help Airtel to push their service to the top 2 most used calling card services for US to India calls. Services like letsdial, 9278, raza will still be around as they offer much cheaper calls to major Indian cities and looks like both Reliance and Airtel plan to have a uniform rate for the whole of India. If reliance can get such a huge customerbase with 13 cents a minute, with a similar service at 8 cents, Airtel can surely give it a tough fight.

Now lets move onto the bad part.. Airtel Calling cards for USA to India Review

Have you used the service.. please leave a comment below.

[Friends, if you use any other calling card, ie letdial , 9278 , Raza or whatever, please post a few paragraphs on your experience and we will send you a $5 free calling card. Enjoy and keep talking !!]

30 comments

Posted by Ram on 2007-01-01 at 12:44 am

I have attempted to register for the service four times and I have failed so far. First attempts were due to the slowness of the site and subsequent ones due to unknown error when a pop-up says that Registration is unsuccessful and I should try again. I called customer service to register via phone and there this terrible message while on hold that repeats every 5 seconds in a very annoying manner. There is no point with promotions when one can't even register.

Posted by NoSharuk AssHooleKhan on 2007-01-01 at 7:21 pm

Blood Ass and Khans we never like. and watch his movies. Whey this ass is showing up in every ads.
People who watch other language never watch this Ass. Then why use.

Posted by Jeremy Balwinder Singh on 2007-01-04 at 6:59 pm

This service rocks. Not had a problem with it. Cheeper than Reliance. We love Sharookh.

Posted by S. Subramanian on 2007-01-05 at 8:24 pm

I signed up and registered after a few unsuccessful attempts. Then when I dial the toll-free number and the 4 digit PIN the voice will say "input incorrect" even though the PIN was correct. Then I made a few calls without a problem. Again I am getting the "input incorrect" message. They have lots of glitches that they cannot resolve.

Posted by Ravinder on 2007-01-21 at 7:07 pm

pls send the airtel calling card website link

Posted by pravesh on 2007-01-24 at 6:18 pm

The most pathetic service ever used for any calling card in any country. I registered and money got deducted but email with pin/account details never came. I tried calling customer service and after several attempts in several days I could spk to someone and get my account activated. Calls get disconnected, messages have no logical sense and calling toll free no. is mosty busy if you call at some appropriate indian time specially on weekends. reliance is far far better.

Posted by Aniruddha Joshi on 2007-01-25 at 12:58 pm

This service sucks!Hang on, let me start at the beginning!
1. Dont get lured by the name Bharti! or Airtel! They have not put in the efforts or the money that is required to make this a sustainable service.
2. When you try to login to charge your account, the website responds as if you are punching a key from the moon. The submit button does not appear. In turn if you click once, it appears to click a number of times. In the process your credit card company locks your account thinking it is a fraudulent attempt of charging the card.
3. In frustration when you call their cust service numbers, the executives are helpless to resolve your refund issue. I have had a date ranging from 24 hours to 30 days for committing a refund.Incidentally, I have made one more call today, and still have not receieved my refund yet!!So for all thos who read these review, I am not kidding, stay away from www.airtelcallhome.com !! Or get ready to be slammed!

Posted by madhusudhan reddy on 2007-01-25 at 4:43 pm

i want to call india

Posted by Santosh on 2007-01-28 at 1:18 am

It is a sorry excuse in the name of calling card services to India. They have a lot of work to do to get their act together and weed out everyone of those stupid glitches.

I registered on their site but never got my pin number. After 3 really long phone calls and 4 whole days I finally got my pin. The card was immediately charged though. Nothing great about the calls.. I got lots of echos and their quality was not even half as great as reliance.

Seriously these people should really be concentrating on setting their site, customer service and call quality right rather than spending loads of money on hiring some dumb actor.

Posted by viv on 2007-02-01 at 8:01 pm

There indeed are many downside in the service but you should aware of the fact that are making call to India for 4 cents ( after double talktime)

Posted by Nilesh on 2007-02-03 at 3:33 pm

service is good except that many times I get the message that the number is invalid, whereas I did dial the right no (I checked back on the mobile screen). Otherwise the voice quality is good, so is the registration easy. Great value for money for 4 cents/min

Posted by Vikas on 2007-02-04 at 8:35 am

I googled for Airtel calling cards. This present site popped up. I googled different combinations of "airtel calling cards" the actual site at which I can buy airtel cards never came up. Got frustrated and gave up. If they don't have proper search & reach function, how will they serve the customers properly. Relaince has its problems. It is not accepting any credit cards. Man, we are stuck.

Posted by Rakesh on 2007-02-06 at 8:52 pm

Most pathetic and unprofessional i have ever seen.reliance is 1000 times better.when i first try to open an account,the website gets stuck unfinished but when i find out frm the creditcard bank i notice they have charged.I had opened an account without being aware tht i was charged first time.once i got to know that i was charged twice,i made a request to them to cancel my earliar account.Finally to my astonishment,i notice both my acounts have been cancelled.when i make a call to the customer care why they had cancelled,they gave a dumb explanation saying that as both the accounts had same address,they made a mistake by cancelling both accounts.I guess by now u must have picturized how this unit is working.guys be aware.

Posted by VINEET GUPTA on 2007-02-13 at 8:27 pm

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.

Posted by deep on 2007-02-14 at 11:30 am

I have signed up for airtel call home service and I just want to warn everybody not to use this service because several of my calls are billed twice and custmer service is/was never reachable. Airtel service is a fraud. However, reliance india call is a very good service. I never faced any problem in last 2 years.

Posted by Sarosh Sepai on 2007-02-16 at 6:35 am

I had no problems either registering, or getting my PIN, etc. Initially the card was great....the voice quality as good as Reliance....no issues.....then suddernly since past two weeks the automated voice prompts of the toll free number keeps repeating messages multiple times. It is a pain to dial any number through it. I will certainly switch back to Reliance who consistently shows quality.

Posted by airtel_victim on 2007-02-16 at 12:40 pm

Good thing is the quality is good.

The worst things are:

* They are charging additional extra minute. eg if the call is ended at exactly at 1:00 minute, the cal was charged for 2 minutes. It is happening every time.

* They forcebly dropping the calls at 3:00 and 3:01 minutes to charge for the extra minute.

Worst ever service by a reputed company. Please check your call logs and usuage.

Posted by Arun on 2007-02-16 at 12:57 pm

The sound quality and number reach to India is good. However be wary of the website. It is too slow to respond and most of the times, it gets stuck without providing a response (probably airtel needs to add a couple of more servers in the US).

Regards,
Arun.

Posted by aammi on 2007-02-18 at 9:49 pm

I has bee using relianceindia alling card for one year. But till now i didnt get any promotions or any thing.. I think Airtel is good choice.

Posted by Mittal on 2007-02-26 at 5:20 am

F**ked up business and peoples. Look like there are p*mp b**tards doing brokerage for their manager who never seems to be in office. They have two wings Front end and Back end which is Techinical guys and both the b*stards dont know what they do. All airtel team from airtel call home are son of a b*tch and p*mps.

Posted by ANIL Vennavalli on 2007-02-27 at 9:09 am

Connectivity and clarity is good. For the last one year i have been using reliane account for short duration calls and other phone cards too. But now as airtel is comparitively cheaper i prefer calling using airtel account rather than reliance

Posted by Frustrated User on 2007-02-28 at 1:39 pm

This is most "FAALTUU" telephone card ever I have seen. I never able to make call India. Everytime it is busy. Their site sucks ! Never works. I could not able to talk their cust service so far. Don't waste your time and money. This really sucks !

Posted by Chandan on 2007-02-28 at 9:36 pm

The service is useless. Not at all good in case of emergency. Its better to buy cheap calling cards then Airtel which make connections properly ofcourse with some fees. reliance is better and is much better in festival offer

Posted by deepa on 2007-03-02 at 5:56 am

hey .this service was sick initially .coz it kept asking for pin ..and wud stare it ot b wrong every attempt..but with time the service has been btr,and now gets connected on 1st or 2nd attempt.,definatley btr than reliance in rates,saves a lot on ph bills..

Posted by Ankit C on 2007-03-05 at 1:24 pm

I registered for their service. First time I got the error and did not recieve any mail with pin so I tried to register again. This time it worked but I noticed that they charged $20 instead of $10 for some reason. I got the mail with pin and account number. My trouble started after that. I dialed their toll free number which prompted me to enter the account number and pin. After I entered the account number and pin, I got invalid pin message. I wrote a mail to customer service and they said it is not their problem. I tried to call customer service toll free number which never worked. So I sent another mail, requesting them to close my account and refund my money. Never heard back from them, its been around two months now. I have tried to use their service in the mean time with no luck. It really sucks.

Posted by srinu on 2007-03-08 at 10:22 am

I tried Airtel calling card. Worst service I ever had in USA. They double billed me for some of my calls. I came to know about this company, Rangatel.com, from my friend. I just bought a $20 calling card as I will be getting a $5 free. I will let you know how the service is in the next few days.