Selling calling cards to India has been such a booming business of late, with the Indian population in US growing at a staggering pace in the last few years. There have been so many service providers offering calling cards these days, the latest of whom is Airtel - by Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications company in India.

I’ve been using Reliance for calling India and their service has been very good. However, I got lured by the low per-minute price being offered by Airtel as part of their promotional offer (7.9 cents a minute, compared to Reliance’s 12.9 cents). I first opened my account with just 5 dollars, as I only wanted to check out their quality. I managed to sign up on their ridiculously dysfunctional website and even made a few test calls to India. I thought the voice quality was decent; so I decided to bite the bullet and recharged my account with another 50 bucks. And they were offering double talk time on the first recharge, and it wasn’t a bad choice either — or so I thought!

All troubles started after I made my first recharge, which is probably a coincidence. Their 1-800 number to initiate the call wouldn’t work, their “supposedly 24X7″ customer service line always gives busy tone, and their online feedback form won’t let you submit a complaint! Even if you manage to connect a call successfully, it would drop within a few minutes.

Airtel really had nothing in place to offer the service. I think they just rushed into it to meet the holidays deadline without really planning their launch - which I am sure had made a lot of newly signed customers pull their hair out in frustration. I’ve heard similar complaints from a few friends of mine too. I’m now just trying to use up at least my 50 dollars I’d put in for the first recharge - forget about their bonus double talk time - once that is done, I am going back to Reliance. Quality and reliability of service is far more important than lower price. Unfortunately, Airtel’s service had none of these working for them right now.