Gone are the days when we would be calling the customer care of our respective operators and not be charged for getting our doubts and problems cleared.

All this is happening because of the down to earth call rates due to the intense competition which has made the call rates to come down to as low as 1Ps/ Pulse.

This Drastic decrease in call rates has had the Telecom providers in a fix as the revenue is plummeting very drastically in a very short time.

According to Statistics the average revenue per subscriber or ‘Arpu’(Average Revenue Per User) that telecom companies in India earn has plunged 30% to Rs160 per month — one of the lowest rates in the world — from around Rs225 a year back.

According to a Telecom Expert “The Customer care queries are increasing drastically due to the congestion in the networks due to the increase in the number of users, and this has shown a way for the telecom providers to gain Revenue from different sources.

Accordingly The different users have changed the features in their Customer care interface to suite the charges which are being implied on the customers first by Airtel, then Loop mobile and then Vodafone.

this is what the different Network providers had to say:

A Vodafone Essar spokesperson said: “We changed our IVR system very recently. If you call 111, the IVR will ask whether you want to register a complaint or do something else. If it’s a complaint, the caller will be asked to terminate the call and dial 198, which is toll free. But if you need to talk to an agent, a message will tell you that the call will be charged at 50p for three minutes.”

Loop Mobile spokesperson said the Ruia Group company plans to roll out a big advertisement campaign for customers. “We have already sent SMSes to our subscribers that some calls to customer care will be charged from April 1.”

A Reliance Communications spokesperson said the company’s customer care numbers have always been toll free if the caller calls from a Reliance number. He said the company will also provide the number 198toll free for complaints as directed by Trai.