Airtel is one of the top operator in India and maybe the only truly Indian mobile operator. Anyone, rich or poor faces the problem of zero balance at some point when making a call is extremely important. Vodafone has offered its low balance services since long and Airtel also tried with the same around 3 years back, but the option was quickly discontinued.
Airtel has once again brought the service back to life and now offers lots of options relating to making emergency calls under low balance or to request someone for a call back. There are also the options to gift packs to your friends or to ask them to send you talktime. What more? You can also block the requests if you are receiving too many of callback or loan requests. Following context tries to explain the various parts of the service.
Contents
Take Emergency Loan of ₹10
If you are in urgent need of talktime, you can instantly take a loan of ₹10 from Airtel. To avail this facility, your balance need to be less than ₹5 and your account should’ve completed 180 days with Airtel. The balance will be quickly available in your account and you can use it to make calls or send text messages. An amount of ₹12 (including processing fees of ₹2) will be deducted from your Airtel balance after 24 hours. In case you don’t have sufficient balance, the remaining will be recovered anytime later when you recharge your account.
To take the loan, dial: *141*10#
or dial *141#, reply with 3 and reply again with 1 to the next message.
To check your outstanding loan, dial: *141#, reply with 3, and reply with 3 to the next message.
Ask friends to send you some talktime
If you don’t want to take the loan because you are not eligible or have already used it, you can ask your friends to send you some talktime. To request for talktime you need to be an Airtel customer for more than 90 days.
To request for talktime, dial: *141#, choose 3 after the menu comes, then choose 2 from the new menu, enter the Airtel number of the donor.
A message will be sent to the donor informing him about your need. Rest is his/her own wish to choose to send you talktime or not. You can request for talk time maximum 5 times a day and 40 times in a month.
Share Taktime with your friends or Send Talktime
So a friend has requested you to send him some talktime, or you’re just wishing to make someone happy by sending some free talktime. Cool idea and that’s possible now. You can send talktime to any Airtel prepaid user no matter if he has requested for talktime or not.
To send talktime, dial *141# and reply with 1 (share talktime) to the main menu. In the next menu, enter the amount which you wish to send (b/w ₹5 to ₹40); followed by the Airtel number where you want to send the talktime in the next menu.
Charges: You will be charged the amount sent + ₹2 as service charges.
You can also send a talktime of ₹51 or ₹101 as it’s treated as a shagun amount. You can share talk time up to 5 times a day and 30 times a month to a maximum of 10 unique Airtel numbers.
Call Back SMS, Gift Plans and Block Certain Requests
We’ve covered the major aspects of the service above, but there’s more to the story. You can also gift certain plans to your loved ones; say a free SMS or a GPRS plan for somebody who you care for 🙂 To be able to send a gift, you should be using your airtel prepaid connection for 60 days or more. You can only send up to 5 gift packs in a day and up to 30 in a month.
Besides that, you can also send a Call me back SMS (3 texts at max) when your balance is low and you can’t make any calls. To send a call me back sms, write a text in the form call <space> <mobile no> and send it to 121
Need more? There are also the options to block certain requests. Like block your number from the request list so that no body is able to send you requests asking for some talkime.
All this can also be accessed from the menu which comes up on dialing *141#. So go ahead and start exploring this cool service 🙂
