Just happened to sit in one of the Cafe Coffee Days in Noida sector 63 today. The store manager was not around and hence we could not request for free WI-FI access - the other option was to pay for the internet service. I thought let me just pay for the service.
The process was simple:
a) Try accessing google.com and the pop up for Airtel Hot Spot popped up.
b) There was an option to buy data - irrespective of the option one choses - it redirected to 50 INR and 120 minutes internet access plan. (I guess no one even tested the feature once !)
c) The site asked for keying in the phone number for sending verification code and post providing the code redirected to select the plan (or was it other way round - not sure)
c) We selected to pay by Net Banking and selected our bank.
d) The payment gateway never came up for HDFC bank irrespective of the number of tries made.
At this point the internet start to work for a short duration and the interesting part is you can keep on repeating the process any number of times. I wanted to see how many times can one try until you get blocked - well I gave up after three tries. There should have been a check at this stage - someone requesting authorisation over and over again should be part of the expected scenario.
Just shows how screwed up Airtel is. The other day I tried for hours to edit the myBill plan to today I genuinely tried to pay for service. Somehow Airtel never cares !
I guess rather than trying to convince TRAI against Net Neutrality - Airtel should try to fix holes in its IT infrastructure which are causing them revenue leaks.
