Oct 15, 2008 06:47 PM
2034 Views
I would like to share the bad experience I have been having with BIG TV. To get a connection, you need to pay the amount in advance (ranging from Rs 2k to 4k ) and purchase a Set top box from any of the reliance centers. Then you need to call their Customer care center(Thank God it is a toll free number) where in they will take your smart card number & give you a work order reference. The installation as per their representative would be attended within 3 days. But that 3days will never see the light of the day.
After 3 days when you enquire they will tell you that technician would call you within 24 hours. To motivate you, they will register your complaint and give you a complaint number. The next day when you refer to that complaint number to your surprise, they would say the complaint is closed. If you start yelling how the complaint has been closed without completing the installation, they would generate another complaint number and this process goes on & on.
Some of their Customer care representatives are very arrogant that they disconnect the calls abruptly as they are not be in a position to answer your queries. I have purchased set top box at Bangalore 7 days before and waiting for installation. Let me now give you the inside story which I have gathered after doing some desperate and frustrated research.
BIG TV does not have a proper service support teams at locations other than Mumbai. They have to necessarily dispatch a team from Mumbai to various places for a certain period to complete installation. These technicians are not conversant with routes in outstations, so they take help of local technicians who are hired on a temporary basis. If I can state in Hindi "Khanna poorthy karne ke liye" sometimes they may call you at odd hours say 8PM in the evening to ask you whether they can come for installation. Nine out of 10 times one would say No. But if you say OK, they would never turn up & if by chance you have the person’s contact number, he would say that he got struck in traffic jam and could not come and would come the next day. But no one would turn up the next day but they would call up the customer care that address could not be located & they will close your complaint.
Customer care would never give you any local contact numbers and they would say that mail would be sent to the concerned, the reason being Reliance have not provided roaming facility to their technicians from Mumbai.
So long and short of the story, you should consider yourself lucky if you get the installation done within 20 days.I wonder if you have problems after installation how many months reliance would take to attend.
I have some basic questions to ask Reliance
1. Why have they gone for launching BIG TV in a bigggg way when they don’t have adequate service back up.
2. Why have they employed boys at customer care who are arrogant and lack basic courtesy.Simple way to solve this issue is to record all calls and sack people who are rude to customers
3. Is Mr.Ambani seized of the situation. It is quite unlikely as I have a great regard for his business acumen.
4. If they know that they are short of staff why do they take full payment up front and earn the displeasure of customers. Instead they could take a token advance of say Rs 200 and collect the balance money after installation. So my personal opinion, do not go for BIG TV unless you are assured connection would be done in 48 hours which is quite unlikely in the present circumstances
Moral of the story – BIG is always not beautiful
Cheers , I have not lost hope having spent the money.
