Feb 13, 2007 06:57 AM
1498 Views
(Updated Feb 13, 2007 06:59 AM)
Recently the Tatas acquired Corus for$12 billion. It was supposed to be a significant step for corporate India in leaving their impression on the global stage. It was supposed to be a sign of the license-raj of the 80’s being dismissed as a nightmare of the past. It was a sign that announced emphatically that in a 2007 India, it was the customer who was the King or Queen depending upon your gender preferences.
Looks really good on paper, doesn’t it? Alas the reality is far away from this carefully constructed illusion. The customer is a King without any power and is often treated like dirt. Customer service is a jargon that makes sense only in b-school text books. Choice the customer has in plenty; the choice of being cheated out and trampled by multiple vendors.
However before I get completely off topic let me say it was with some hesitation that I opted for a Tata Indicom broadband connection about 6 months ago. Airtel didn’t have feasibility in the apartments where I lived, so my only choices were BSNL and Tata Indicom. Being a 23 year old and not having any sort of association with the public sector I decided to give Tata Indicom a shot. Imagine my disappointment when Airtel came calling only a couple of weeks after I had finalized on Tata Indicom.
There were problems right from the get go. The installation that was supposed to take 7 working days took at least 20. Had it not been for my persistence they may well have taken over a month. The people who came to install the connection didn’t inspire any confidence in me either; they lacked any sort of understanding between them and looked clueless about where their own towers were located. Miraculously after tripping over their own feet for some time they managed to get the whole thing working.
If I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with these jokers again for quite sometime, I had another thing coming. The connection would fail almost every week, leaving me without the pleasures of checking my mail and doing other such simple things on the https:// Now undoubtedly the best part about Tata Indicom is their unparalleled customer service. If anyone wanted to, they possibly couldn’t have designed a better system to ‘pass the buck’. When you call up the customer care expecting an immediate resolution of your problem, someone in Hyderabad picks up the call and after exchanging the rehearsed pleasantries takes down the nature of the complaint and issues a complaint number promising that the problem would be taken care of in 24 hours. However I have never seen a promise that has been broken as consistently as this one. You don’t feel like venting your ire at the customer care executives because of their helplessness. After all what can a couple of kids sitting in Hyderabad do about a broken cable in my building in Bangalore.
Ultimately I was left with no choice but to build some sort of a cordial relation with the manager who was handling my area in Bangalore. He would send out the people responsible for maintenance and repair but not before I badgered him with at least 15 calls. When these people finally arrived, it seemed like their only purpose was to define the word “incompetence”. They had no clue where the towers were located, they carried no equipment with them expecting me to provide the same and to make matters worse they failed to practice common courtesy like informing me if they were not going to turn up at a promised time. I frankly cannot recollect the number of times I have sat at my home twiddling my thumbs waiting for these guys to show up only to be ditched without any prior notice.
Without too much time to spare to go in for another vendor, I persisted with Tata Indicom giving away at least 6-7 paying days in a month due to some inefficiency on their end. However the final straw came when the Internet failed once again and I discovered that the cable near the tower had been cut. Surprisingly this time around they were prompt enough to send someone over in a couple of days and he claimed to have changed the cable. The relief lasted for all but 24 hours and I found myself tearing my hair apart in frustration once again. When I made my way up to the terrace I could not believe what I was saw. The Tatas who had just spent$12 billion on acquiring a foreign company, did not have enough money to spring for a new cable. They had just tied two broken cables together at various different places and left them hanging perilously on the terrace. It was an embodiment of not only sheer callousness but also complete disrespect for everyone who lived there.
It’s almost been a month since that incident and I have decided not to take it lying down. This review at Mouthshut is only the first step, I plan to get together with all of the gullible people in my apartments who have also suffered at the hands of Tata Indicom and go to the consumer court. After all somebody needs to teach them a lesson and I am sure as hell ready to try.
