New Delhi-based Nitin Sethi has alleged that he has received a whopping Rs 1,86,553 bill from Airtel. He's been asked to pay the sum immediately. The bill -- that he has shared with India Today Tech -- has been generated for the period June 8-July 7, 2017 with Airtel's permutations and combinations suggesting that Nitin used services worth Rs 1,52,727 during the period. Nitin however alleges that he has little idea how such a thing happened in the first place, even more so, when the bill clearly shows that he has a credit limit of Rs 14,000 going beyond which he should have at least got a call from Airtel that he had exhausted the upper limit of his post-paid plan.

Update: Looks like all is well that ends well. In this case it seems that there indeed was a problem with the Airtel bill but it was more of some glitch, somewhere. And the company has fixed the issue, apparently to the satisfaction of Nitin.

The image below shows how Nitin's Airtel problem was fixed.

Things apparently started to get eerie for Nitin -- a frequent traveler -- when he was traveling to Dubai with his family for a vacation in June. Just like anybody else, he had activated an International -- in this case Asian -- roaming pack for the 10-days that he had planned his trip for. Nitin notes that this was the first time he got himself an International roaming boost from Airtel. Previously he had been using International SIM cards from Matrix.

It's a known fact now that Airtel isn't particularly fond of fidgeting with your existing plan even if you're eligible for say more data at the same price unless you specifically call them up and ask them to. The same rule applies for International roaming as well which means once you're back in your home network it's better you call Airtel up and ask them to de-activate your roaming pack. But even then, Airtel makes it clear that once you're inside your home network, the network will stop charging you in terms of International rates.

A 'technical glitch' in Airtel's My Airtel app however resulted in the service still being activated (or something like that) so it seems Nitin was still on International roaming even when he was in India. He says he was quick to follow it up with Airtel but he was told that it was just a technical error and that it would go soon. Thankfully, no bill was generated, on his account back then. Up until recently. Last week, he says, the bill got generated and he was asked to pay Rs 1,86,553 with immediate effect. This time when he called up an Airtel service representative he was still told that it was an error, only this time round, he was told to pay the bill and that everything would be settled later.

Soon enough, he started to receive the customary messages from the telecom operator hounding him to pay the bill or his services will be terminated. Nitin eventually decided to take things to social media following which his voice was finally heard by top-level Airtel executives. He has now been told by Airtel that the error will be corrected in the next four days.

Here is what Nitin wrote on social media:

"Hi,

This is Nitin Sethi. I have taken fixed international roaming pack for Dubai from 2nd -11th June (Rs. 2999/- with 10 days validity). I have given a call back once I came back on 11th to stop roaming. Now, suddenly my bill for last month is some 1,86,553/- (one lakh eighty six thousand five hundred fifty three). I have raise this complaint twice last month but still no resolution. Please look into this and fix the issue asap."

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