May 15, 2010 09:08 PM
4989 Views
(Updated May 21, 2010 12:01 PM)
I would like to narrate my in laws harrowing experiences with Onida brand’s Color TVs since more than last 3 months. They ( my in laws who have remained a die hard loyalist to Videocon and Philips brand ever since 1990) unfortunately fell prey to the high level false product promotion given by the dealer we have trusted for decades, M/S Arvee Agencies, Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi and brought home a Onida 21 Slim 350 TV on 22 January 2010. Little did they realise that this gamble to experiment with a different TV brand would prove to be disastrous in the months to come. Ever since it has been installed at their residence in Alaknanda, it started giving all sorts of weird problems which one just cannot think of and to add to further woes, the problems were getting worse with each passing day! In a nutshell, some of the general problems that actually need to be highlighted here are as follows:
The average time for the TV to actually switch on is around 12 seconds.
When we switch off the tv, we first switch off the remote and then the main switch, but when we are again trying to switch it on, the tv gets started when the main switch is switched on without switching on the remote!
The TV surprisingly gets switched off at times when the volume control is adjusted from the Set Top Box.
The TV sometimes gets switched off without any manual intervention.
My in laws had complained to the Service centre twice, but sadly the mechanic was far from being properly trained, in fact very rude in behaviour also, he just slapped the set from behind which just worsened the situation only! After this special treatment by the mechanic, the volume level of the TV has decreased drastically!
After lot of follow-ups and persuasion from my in laws as well as our dealer, we were thankful that Onida was kind enough to depute another mechanic on 01 April 2010, who certified that this Onida brand TV was not compatible with the Hathway brand Set Top box that my in laws have at their place and moreover this set had some other technical problems, hence the only solution lies in changing the set altogether.
However the wait for a new set was far from over! After receiving no response from Onida for another fortnight, I personally spoke to their Service head, Mr Ricky Verma who flatly denied that his engineer had committed for a change of set!! ( To be precise, his words were” Sir har customer hi to chahega ki uska set change ho, hum to aise nahi kar sakte” When I insisted that his engineer had promised to do so, he said “ Uska aukat kya hai ki woh mujhse puche bina aisa kar sakta hai” At that moment, I thought that I was speaking to a petty road side businessmen, such was the arrogance in his conversation. Utterly frustrated, I turned to my dealer, who personally visited Onida’s service centre and somehow managed to unearth the complaint no. ( Probably Onida is the only company in the world whose service engineers do not give a counter foil of the copy of the complaint that they make after diagnosing the fault of the appliances, hence our dealer had to run from pillar to post to track the complaint no).
Again after a lot of persuasion, my in laws were fortunate enough to receive Onida service engineer on 27 April 2010 who reiterated that the only solution lies in changing the set, however till the time of writing this review, my in laws are yet to receive any call from Onida! We have been trying to follow up with our dealer but he also seems to have been totally frustrated at the lacklustre attitude of the company and hence showing little interest in taking up our case with the company these days!!!
Right now, I am trying to create public awareness by submitting this online review: also I am in the process of writing to their top management seeking an immedete solution, if nothing materialises by the end of next week, it will just take a day for me to go to Times Of India editorial and narrate this entire story of harrassment to be published in their Business Times page. I think the senior citizens in our country are the most vulnerable lot for murder and robbery, to add fuel to the fire, this is a glaring example of how renowned brands in our country tend to take these hapless elderly people for a ride!
I would like to caution my readers that please** do not go by the flashy advertisements of the company’s products, think twice before committing this blunder! Ideally the new punch line of their advertisement should be “Owner’s envy, neighbours pride!” and not “Neighbours envy, owner’s pride” which actually swept the Indian customers in the protected economy era!
