There are many sites on the internet that claim to give you free
recharge on referring your friends and other people on reaching a
minimum referral number, but all are scams never try them. There are other
sites using which you can recharge your mobile, I never tried them as I
used to do it through the service provider`s site only like Airtel & Vodafone.
Few months back I saw this site somewhere and tried it. I got a successful recharge with the coupons at my residential address as mentioned and they charge Rs. 10 for delivery of coupons. I used their services few times until one day I tried to do a recharge and got a charge on my card but never got my number recharged for the selected amount and since then keep tracking them but they rarely replied.
I also got an email from CCAvenue which is the payment gateway provider for Freecharge.in. It stated that they have initiated the refund which I never got in my bank and I am still thinking how reliable is CCAvenue payment gateway? I will better stick to Paypal only
After few more emails, I got an email from Freecharge as shown in the image below but with no refund on time:
When I wrote more emails as shown below
I only got reply as shown but no refund
So overall for me Freecharge.in is a scam and now I understand how they earn money and recover the charges for their coupon codes which they send via post by gulping their customers money. I shared this scam so that you don`t lose your money on such sites like I did and then your time in recovering it. It is a hectic process of recovering your money and I am sure many people won't be able to recover it. It has been 3 months with no refund and only a game of emails is in the scene now. If required, I will take action in consumer court as upon dialing the numbers provided on their site I get no response. If you have such experience with any site then do share your experience with us using the comment form below.
Update :
Finally today ( 4-5-2011 ) I got a call from one of the Managers of Freecharge customer care team that a technical glitch was there because of which the amount couldn`t get refunded in my account. She said that the amount would be refunded back tomorrow morning or if I wish my number will be recharged for the total amount that I owe to them.
I will keep you updated, whatever happens next. I am already getting so many emails from different people with their issues to be published here but I need all the proofs like I posted above so that we can publish your story that needs to be resolved asap rather we will launch a forum where we can discuss things in details to improve customer service in our country.
Today ( 5-5-2011 ), I got the recharge done on my number for the total amount which I tried to do earlier. I have been a regular customer of Freecharge till this technical glitch happened where my credit card got charged but my mobile did not get recharged for the selected amount. It can happen with any company and it does happen sometime which is not a big deal. If someone would have replied to my emails with proper action, might be still I love to use the site but I realized the reality and now I directly use the vendor's site to recharge anything. I know they lost many customers like this and they need to improve the service or refund procedure as other sites are coming up with this Free Recharge scheme. You never know who will be the next big hit. I was about to write on my other sites as well where I have thousands of daily readers so that they can use their service but suddenly all this happened.
I remember the stories when IBM people used to laugh when Bill & Michael were working on Dell and Microsoft. Now both these companies completely replaced IBM ( who laid the foundation of computers in the market ) because of their great customer support & service. IBM could be a part of this battle if they would have provided a better support but you know the reality now.
Few months back I saw this site somewhere and tried it. I got a successful recharge with the coupons at my residential address as mentioned and they charge Rs. 10 for delivery of coupons. I used their services few times until one day I tried to do a recharge and got a charge on my card but never got my number recharged for the selected amount and since then keep tracking them but they rarely replied.
I also got an email from CCAvenue which is the payment gateway provider for Freecharge.in. It stated that they have initiated the refund which I never got in my bank and I am still thinking how reliable is CCAvenue payment gateway? I will better stick to Paypal only
After few more emails, I got an email from Freecharge as shown in the image below but with no refund on time:
I only got reply as shown but no refund
So overall for me Freecharge.in is a scam and now I understand how they earn money and recover the charges for their coupon codes which they send via post by gulping their customers money. I shared this scam so that you don`t lose your money on such sites like I did and then your time in recovering it. It is a hectic process of recovering your money and I am sure many people won't be able to recover it. It has been 3 months with no refund and only a game of emails is in the scene now. If required, I will take action in consumer court as upon dialing the numbers provided on their site I get no response. If you have such experience with any site then do share your experience with us using the comment form below.
Update :
Finally today ( 4-5-2011 ) I got a call from one of the Managers of Freecharge customer care team that a technical glitch was there because of which the amount couldn`t get refunded in my account. She said that the amount would be refunded back tomorrow morning or if I wish my number will be recharged for the total amount that I owe to them.
I will keep you updated, whatever happens next. I am already getting so many emails from different people with their issues to be published here but I need all the proofs like I posted above so that we can publish your story that needs to be resolved asap rather we will launch a forum where we can discuss things in details to improve customer service in our country.
Today ( 5-5-2011 ), I got the recharge done on my number for the total amount which I tried to do earlier. I have been a regular customer of Freecharge till this technical glitch happened where my credit card got charged but my mobile did not get recharged for the selected amount. It can happen with any company and it does happen sometime which is not a big deal. If someone would have replied to my emails with proper action, might be still I love to use the site but I realized the reality and now I directly use the vendor's site to recharge anything. I know they lost many customers like this and they need to improve the service or refund procedure as other sites are coming up with this Free Recharge scheme. You never know who will be the next big hit. I was about to write on my other sites as well where I have thousands of daily readers so that they can use their service but suddenly all this happened.
I remember the stories when IBM people used to laugh when Bill & Michael were working on Dell and Microsoft. Now both these companies completely replaced IBM ( who laid the foundation of computers in the market ) because of their great customer support & service. IBM could be a part of this battle if they would have provided a better support but you know the reality now.
