Is this the season to piss me off?

I am so pissed off.

No, I really am.

It seems that all so called 'Services' companies have decided that first they will provide me with atrocious services, and as if that was not enough, would proceed to try to cheat me as well!

First it was Airtel DTH TV services. They provided horrible service and after multiple useless interactions with their customer service I wrote this email to them on 6th April:

Hi,



My name is Swapnil Bhatnagar (customer ID: 3000519148) and I have been a customer of Airtel TV for the last few months.



And I am extremely disappointed with the service that I have received.

i. Two weeks ago I had raised a service request to enable the Fox Crime channel. After requesting twice I was finally informed that the angle of the dish will have to be changed.

ii. After waiting for another week a couple of service engineers came to change the angle

iii. After changing the angle they asked for ‘service charge’

iv. When I had spoken to the call center they had specifically informed me that this is a regular service that is being done for all customers and there will be no charges for this

v. When I told them this, they asked me for ‘tea-coffee money’ instead. Now I’ve heard of postmen and other civil servants asking for bakshish, but has Airtel really gone so far down the drain that a private company’s employees will first try to fleece customer with an imaginary ‘service charge’ and having failed on that, beg for a tip?

vi. The worst part is that half the channels are not coming clearly on the TV since the angle was changed – I was told that this will automatically improve after 45 minutes. It’s been 2 days and nothing has happened. I think this is ‘payback’ for not having paid them ‘tea-coffee money’, and I really resent this pathetic, unprofessional behaviour



Please solve this issue by this weekend or else disconnect this ridiculous TV from my place. Frankly, I’d prefer the local cable guy rather than this kind of unprofessional, money-fleecing service. I also want an extension of the service for a week in lieu of the lack of clear channels I have been getting since those two so called service engineers came.

Fairly harsh, eh? Would a service that depends on customers take this seriously? Of course!

So I received four phone calls from different people and after a lot of hullabaloo, nothing happened.

So I wrote this on 23rd April:

Hi,
Unbelievable!

You guys are just unbelievable.

After this complaint I got 4 different calls from different people all asking me for details and promising me the world in terms of quick resolution of issues. One gentleman even convinced me to recharge my TV with 200 Rs!

And in the end your so called 'service' performed exactly as I expected. Nothing happened. No one sent engineers to solve the problem. No one took the people who asked me for a bribe to task. And I also got an sms saying that my complaint has been resolved!! It has definitely not been resolved. Absolutely useless services and grievance re-dressal wing.

I really don't want to get into an argument with you any further. It would just be a matter of banging my head against a wall. Please do the following and we will part ways without any friction:

1. Treat this email as a cancellation request. I am moving to another service and I want the useless Airtel TV box out of my house ASAP. Please do this fast and also provide me with the correct refund
2. I am cancelling the service - move me away from your sms/marketing lists. I don't want any of your smses in my phone from now on. I will never take another service from you and will actively stop other people from doing the same.
3. Refund the 200 rs recharge that I did based on discussion with your nodal officer. This was the last recharge I did based on the faith that the complaint will be addressed

Quick word of advice, this kind of service will not make you successful in this business. Treating customer complaints with such disdain is the first step in the collapse of your business.

I really don't want to interact with your useless complaint handlers, so please do the above immediately.


-Swapnil Bhatnagar

Harsher, right? Action? None. Basically, it seems to me that they're just trying to cheat me out of the refund due to me when the set top box is removed.

Anyway, I've just sent them an email telling them to remove the box and pay up by tomorrow or I'll go to the consumer court, and by God I will!

In the meantime, does anyone know Sunil Bharti Mittal's email id? I want to forward this email chain to him.

And to add to this frustration, the next company trying to fleece me is the Tata Motors services station (Prerana Motors, Hosur Road)where I get my Palio serviced.

I gave my car for service yesterday, and was given an estimate of, lets say 'X'. Now, just to put into perspective, X is quite close to the monthly rent I give.
And today, I had to call them up to follow up on my car and they casually told me that they won't be able to give my car today, and oh, by the way, the service will cost me 1.5 times X!!

Now, because I was given an estimate of X I had asked them to replace some parts in the car. If I had known about 1.5 X I may have postponed it as I do not want to invest so much money on my (now) old car!

Does anyone have the Tata Motors CEO's email id? I really want to send him an official complaint. Please help!

19178

Zodiac Buying Behaviour...

Apparently a person's sunsign determines how he or she buys stuff. Like most people I did not give any credence to this sun sign stuff. But the proof is irrefutable!

Consider this, I am a Virgo. Apparently Virgos "know what they want and are not satisfied with anything less or different than that." Now in normal circumstances I scoff at this. I have absolutely no clue about what I want from life. What is that one driving force that would motivate me relentlessly.

But the evidence? Atleast in terms of buying stuff is amazing as was pointed out to me by a friend who doesn't really know me for too long.

Most of the purchases I make, the process for deciding on the product takes way way longer than the buying actual buying process. In fact once I've made up my mind to buy some specific thing I have this huge urge, and absolutely childlike craving to get the thing...NOW!

But I am also willing to wait and wait till I can get the exact same thing. Or till i'm able to afford that particular thing. In the meantime I do not even look at other things or even if I do, they don't really register in my psyche as potential alternatives to the initial decision.


Consider some cases in point.

My watch

I did my summer internship with the erstwhile KSA Technopak (www.technopak.com). It was a project about a feasibility study for a couple of malls which the consultancy's clients wanted to set up in Mumbai. So for the 'extremely important and critical primary research' work (read grunt work that no actual employee of the organization wanted to do) D and I were packed off for two weeks to Mumbai.

(As an aside, this was going to be my first trip paid for by someone other than my parents. I was quite excited about it even though we only got train tickets and not air tickets. Unfortunately a day before the trip I crashed my car in a highly stupid way into a divider. Fortunately I wasn't going too fast and I managed to get away without too much damage. Also, I wasn't wearing a seat belt at that time. So all those people reading this blog - WEAR SEATBELTS AND HELMETS. Its just such a stupid way to get injured. Anyway inspite of this I did go to Mumbai the next day)

The work we were doing included visiting a large number of malls and speaking to shop owners, mall managers, customers etc etc. Obviously it was a very plum assignment as compared to most of my batchmates who were researching parts of rural India or even if they were in cities, were doing unglamourous stuff. (Ours wasn't really glamorous but it could be made to sound extemely glamorous - which is what I did while talking to batchmates upon returning :). Oh, and this was improved even further as a batchmate saw D and I having ice cream while strolling along marine lines while he was travelling in a bus. This obviously meant that the image about my project was - he gets to go to Mumbai, cavort around in malls and other air conditioned places while we struggled in hot, semi-rural places. AND he gets to go there with a pretty girl as well! God is not fair. Needless to say I got a lot of dagger eyed stares when I returned to campus (snigger).)

Right, so coming back to the story, I came across this watch in one of my er..work related mall visits.

I just fell in love with the watch. It was awesome to look at, very sporty and had an angled display. Ohh it was just what I wanted. I went back to see it 3-4 times more. It was 3500 rupees. Way way more than I could afford at that time.

I was so sad to leave the watch behind that I actually took down the number of the model of the watch. I carried it in my wallet for a few months before Titan came up with an exchange offer of giving your old watch and getting a 25% discount on their fast track watches. The day I saw the offer, the very next day I went and bought this watch. Completely emptying out whatever I had saved out of the stipend I got during summers.

I still use the watch and am still as in love with it as I was the day I saw it first (er...this doesn't sound too psychotic, does it?). Since then I can afford watches which are much more expensive and are amazing to look at but I just don't feel the urge to buy it the way I felt with this!

Virgo buying behaviour.

The Car

My love for the Palio I have is well documented ( http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-own-set-of-wheelswheee.html ). I saw the Palio for the first time in 2001 and decided than and there that I had to have it. When I finally put together enough money to buy a Palio, Fiat went and changed the car. They changed the headlights and reduced the power. AND I HATED them for doing it. I just had to have the old model only. I took a used car, but I took the one I wanted forfeiting a better model, or a new car, or even some other car more suited to psychotic driving of Bangalore.

Again the Virgo buying behaviour!

And the latest to join this league is my new phone!

Yes, yes, I bought a new phone over the weekend. Eventhough I didn't take too long to decide on the model, I got that urge to own very very strongly. I slept fitfully one day after dragging my poor flatmate PS half way across the city looking for the phone. The next day I got up bright and early and went through 5-6 shops.(I've become quite lazy about taking out my car and driving across Bangalore on weekends but for this I went for it crazily. So from decision to buying a fairly expensive thing took me about 17 hours!!

Oh, the phone is a Sony Ericsson G700 ( http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_g700-review-220.php ), very cool phone. I'm broke now, but happy - true Virgo fashion !