Maximum billing disputes against Vodafone, Idea, Tata, BSNL: TRAI

New Delhi: Customers of Vodafone, IdeaCellular, Tata Teleservices and BSNL in some circles have reported maximum discrepancies in their phone bills, according to a latest report by telecom regulator TRAI. As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) guideline, not more than 0.1 per cent of the total bills raised by a company in a service area should be disputed.        

However, 0.18 per cent post-paid customers of Vodafone customers in Andhra Pradesh disputed their bills, 0.33 per cent in Assam and 0.24 in North East telecom service area, which covers six states, as per TRAI's Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators for June-September 2014 period.       

Post-paid customers of Idea in Andhra Pradesh (0.19 per cent), Gujarat (0.11 per cent) and Kerala (0.13 per cent) complaint about their phone bills. Over 1 per cent of pre-paid customers of state-run BSNL raised issues in Kolkata and 0.24 per cent in West Bengal raised issue regarding their bills.       

As per TRAI guuidelines, if a customer raises any dispute regarding the bill, companies must resolve the issue within four to six weeks to 100 per cent satisfaction of the customer.  BSNL was unable to resolve billing dispute within 4 weeks in 10 out of 22 telecom circles in the country which include Bihar, Kolkata, North East, Odisha, UP West and West Bengal. There were no records of BSNL available for Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. Further, Tata Teleservices failed to resolve billing dispute in 4 service areas - Mumbai and Maharashtra for both CDMA and GSM services, Kolkata for CDMA and in Tamil Nadu for GSM services.        

Airtel and BSNL failed to refund charges levied wrongly on consumers within TRAI benchmark of 1 week from the date complaint is resolved. While Airtel was found breaching the guidelines on the same in Delhi and Chennai, the state-run firm BSNL credited money back into customer's account across six service areas - Bihar, Chennai, Kolkata, North East, UP West and Bengal.        

TRAI did not had BSNL report on refund status of wrongly charged money in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Rajasthan.