Retailers not to sell Airtel, Aircel, Vodofone prepaid cards

Chennai, July 11: Faced with mounting complaints from mobile customers about cellular operators allegedly charging them for unwanted value added services, over 60,000 retailers in Tamil Nadu have decided not to sell new pre-paid SIM cards of Airtel, Aircel and Vodafone from July 13.

The retailers, who are members of Tamil Nadu Cellular Retailers' Federation, were being flooded with complaints from agitated customers that their pre-paid accounts were being charged without their knowledge for value added services such as caller tunes, federation Secretary A Namashivayam said here.

The federation members would also hold an agitation here on July 13, he told reporters.

"Every day we get at least 20 complaints in the city alone saying the mobile operators have charged for a service, which they did not ask for. In order to express our unhappiness we have decided not to sell the prepaid cards of these three operators," he said.

"Though we are not aware of the charges levied by the mobile companies, the customers come and complain to us thinking that we are charging them," he said.

Besides, he alleged the companies had gradually reduced the recharges commission to retailers to 3.3 per cent after agreeing to seven per cent.

"We were told that we will be getting 7 per cent from the recharged amount as commission but today they are giving only 3.3 per cent.." Namashivayam said.

The July 13 agitation was to focus on this issue also, he said adding the federation representatives planned to meet Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to brief her about their grievances.

He said 75 per cent of the mobile customers in Tamil Nadu preferred either Airtel, Aircel or Vodafone.

There were about 12,000 mobile retailers in city and more than 50,000 across the state, he said.

PTI