This took me by surprise, shock and I was filled with disgust. While I was working in Gurgaon, I had a local number from Airtel and everything was fine until I decided to move back to Bangalore.
This is what happened, I was supposed to pay a specific bill amount and I could not pay it on time largely because of my hectic schedule of travel and whatever reason there are (yes I should have paid the bill on time but I was ready to bear the fine as I knew I will do it one day once am back).
The customer care in Gurgaon of Airtel totally went insane and started calling my Wife's number asking her to give my Bangalore number to which she said she will give it to them once I'm back, and obviously as Airtel has all customer data they could figure out my number and I sent them a message saying that I will revert to them when I'm in Bangalore. Just a week back they called my wife and started abusing her and to the extent of asking her if she had taken a divorce from me, that she is not telling them my other number (I don't have any other number other than my Bangalore number, and as I was not responding on that they would have pestered her to give my another number (non existent) to them). When I was back in Bangalore last week, I promptly paid the due amount and also cleared my balance.
Now the more disgusting part, which happened during this (before the bill was paid) : They found out some of my frequently called numbers and called up those contacts around India asking them for my contact number, the worst part was they posed as a bank and asked all kind of weird questions, even asking one of my cousins if she was my wife, because she was a lady. All those contacts of mine who were good friends obviously didn't tell my number to that lady but they called me up and were shocked that someone knew their personal number because my privacy was breached. I know it was the same lady because of the number that my friends shared with me from which the call was received and the call that was made to my wife and the call that came to me.
Airtel if you are reading this, you need to watch the way you handle your customer data, this is very very serious stuff! I can share the number with you from which this call was made to all my contacts if you are interested.
