Aug 22, 2008 04:18 PM
10755 Views
(Updated Nov 23, 2008 03:51 PM)
Below is the original review I wrote a few months ago. That review was sent to the Asian paints complaints forum. And 2 days later after a call from their manager a whole troupe of people landed up at our home to check the complaint!! Now that's something to be said about this 'consumer court on the internet' !!!
The issues we pointed out were analysed with gadgets and the diagnosis was twofold - For the outside paint chipping off, we were told that the original patti done by local painters was of poor quality and hence the repainting seems to have chipped off. Now this was not something pointed out the first time they did the repainting. A possibility that it was not so obvious then, exists.
Secondly, the inside chip offs were moslty root caused to excess seepage due to rains and poor construction quality and also bad quality patti. Anyway, we are not paint technology experts and dont have much to comment on the same. In any case, they aologised for the incomplete finishing the first time and agreed to redo all the bad areas free of cost!!! Definitely a huge plus to restore the Asian Paints Home solutions in a very big way....kudos to that!!!!
The same outsoruced company folks (Radiant) redid the problem areas a couple of weeks back and the Asian Paint's RA person supervised and got them to task until he was satisfied (He didnt stop even after we said we were ok with the work, but went about finding all the little faults and correcting them!). The Manager called us and asked for our feedback and satisfaction.
This update is to give the credit where it is due and they definitely deserve it for the attempts made at correcting issues and we highly appreciate the professionalism shown this time.
We recommend the package henceforth and will also go for it for any future painting jobs.
Please keep up the good work!
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ORIGINAL REVIEW WRITTEN A FEW MONTHS AGO:
Asian Paints Home solutions was the only place we decided on for painting our home in Dec 2007....unfortunately! Our home was done by Sept 2005 and we had done the primer and patti then itself. It was considered to be a good practice to leave the newly built house for a while to make the painting process easy and reduce seepages, cracks etc.
So we contacted Asian paints and a 'Sales Associate' visited us. He gave us the initial details and inspected and got a 'Relationship Associate'. The RA discussed, measured and estimated. They made us pay a big advance and the total amount in the form of post dated cheques. The RA then got the 'Applicator' for the execution.
Sounded nice and dandy, so we fixed up a date, applied for our leave from work and waited. No one turned up on the fixed date!! After repeated calls to the RA, they came over and apologised and said work would definitely start on the next day. The next day a lone painter sauntered in after 10 am with some equipment and started on the job. The RA put up a timetable on the door and gave this guy instructions and left. After a couple of days another guy was added and work progressed slowly. We figured that the Applicator was from a company called 'Radiant Enterprises'...welcome to the world of outsourcing!! The RA and Applicator would come and go as they pleased. Many times it was after some repeated calls from us that they turned up. But when they did turn up, they were courteous and apologetic and seemed to do their best.
The painters' skills and equipment seemed to be the same as the local painters. They even borrowed some of our stools and dirtied them. They seemed to have some training to do a cleaner job than local painters perhaps, but most of the equipment seemed like what was used 20 years ago. After hearing about their living conditions we realised that they were pretty much exploited like anyone else despite being 'company' painters...the realities of body shopping. Anyway, coming back to the painting job, we figured that if we dont threaten these guys we would have to extend our vacation leaves endlessly. So after a lot of discussions they got more people and managed to finish the major portions in time. They promised to do the remaining work (after fixtures, cleaning up, peeling paints in some places, finishing touches, painting our stools, etc) over a couple of weekends since we would not be able to stay home more than this. The RA left with the feedback closed.
This is when the fun started. The RA would fix up sometime and not turn up after having us cancel all our other work and wait in vain. This happened a couple of times and he never ran out of excuses. After a couple of months the exterior paint (ACE exterior emulsion with 1 year warranty) started to peel off. Our home started to look like was painted 5 years ago rather than the 2 months. We dont know if Asian paints cheated us or it was the result of so much outsourcing. The RA finally told us that he is not with Asian Paints anymore (bad pay, exploitative work and blah and blah). He gave us his replacement's number. This guy did not turn up after all promises over the phone. We then called the Home solutions numbers and filed a complaint. Another RA turned up, inspected and hoo-haa-ed about how it is not possible for the exterior paint to peel off and all that...yeah right! we had climbed our walls and rooftops to scrape the paint manually just to spite him!! Anyway he promised that the exteriors and the remaining finishing work would be done asap....that was one month ago!!! No news from him or anyone else in Asian Paints. Looks like they will not respond...atleast not till the warranty period expires!
Sum of it - Asian Paints' experiment with Home solutions seems to have failed miserably and they dont seem to want to restore their reputation from the looks of other reviews in this forum. It seems better to stick to the local unorganised sector of labour, than pay a hefty sum for the 'professional touch' that these guys provide where you deal with the same nonsense again! And the lesser said about qualtiy and durability, the better!!
PS: I have been very kind in this review :-)
