Scammed!!!

While I have travelled a lot and worked in a variety of countries, I would have to admit to having been caught by a few scams over the past 40 years or so. However I was caught out completely by a mobile phone scam here.

When we arrived at Cochin, there was a mobile phone shop in the airport where it was possible to get a local sim card but it was 4.30 am on Sunday morning and I was tired and there was a queue so I decided that I would leave it till I got into town. Then, while we were at Cherai beach, I tried one of the local phone shops and found that I would have to go to a main retail office.

So, on our way from Cherai to Hinterland, I got the taxi driver to make a detour via a main retail centre (a bit like the EE shop on Princes St) for Idea Cellular - one of the local service providers who were reported to have good coverage across Kerala. I was served by a very helpful young lady who filled out all the appropriate forms, attached my passport photo, copied my passport and Indian E-visa, and explained that I would have to pay 229 Rupees for unlimited phone calls across Kerala for 28 days - including 500Mb of data - and a further 200 Rupees for unlimited worldwide international calls for the same period - all of which tallied with my research. She then took me across to her colleague at the cash desk who took the money. She  gave me a sim card which we installed in my phone and told me that it would take about 3 hours for the sim to be activated. As we left, she gave me a brochure type folder with 'your paperwork'. Feeling pleased with the result, we got back in the taxi and headed of to Hinterland and our first yoga session.

After 24 hours and still no connection and finding that the folder with the paperwork was actually  advertisement for another product, I asked one of the staff members at the retreat to help me solve the problem. After a number of calls to Idea customer care he reported back that the sim card had never been registered and that as far as Idea were concerned there had been no transaction. Then in conversation with the Hinterland Manager, I learned that this had happened with a number of others to his knowledge.

So, it appears that the very helpful young lady in the Idea retail centre along with at least one of her colleagues had gone through all the appropriate paperwork processes, taken my money, passed me off with an unregistered sim card and then binned all the paperwork.

I intended to go back and sort them out until Linda pointed out that it had only cost me £5 after all, that the taxi to go back would be about £15 and that it would probably be a lot of hassle particularly if they just denied that it had ever happened. So I have settled for writing to the Chief executive of Idea, also to the head of the local tourism board, and to the Editor of the Times of India which has at least made me feel better about the whole incident.