Frustration over refund of excess payment. Review on Vodafone Mobile Operator

Till date, I have not got the Refund of Rs. 34 from Hutch and no help whatsover was received despite addressing my concern to VP - Arti Prakash and CEO Rajeev Sawhney. I would also like to write about my frustrating experience with Customer Service of Hutch Care. I feel that it's not about a small amount of Rs. 34, which I didn't receive but the frustration and lack of customer service and customer centricity, which I received from Hutch.

I closed my Hutch Corporate Account, as I left India for an indefinite period. When my account 9899011112 was closed, I requested for repayment of Credit Balance of Rs. 34, which was present on my account. My Name, as registered in Hutch's Records was ''Rangan K''. However, when the refund was processed, Hutch assumed that the expansion my last name ''K'' was ''Kumar'' and the Cheque was issued in favour of ''Rangan Kumar'' instead of ''Rangan K'', as it is present in their Records.

Upon receiving the cheque, I immediately requested that the same be cancelled, as the name written on Cheque was wrong and it was processed wrongly due to an error at their end and a Fresh Cheque be issued in my original name registered with them, as ''Rangan K''

I wrote several letters and emails to Hutch but all I was told was to send the Cheque back to Hutch through Courier with my identification proof!! I then escalated the matter to VP Customer Service and later even CEO Rajeev Sawhney but there were no responses from their side. Emails were read by persons named Naushad Ali, Corporate Care etc. but no response. On many occasions, the emails were deleted without even reading! These were addressed to Ritu Kaushal, Ms. Kaur, V. Prakash, etc.

Also, following up on such a small matter from outside the country was frustrating.

Would anybody from Hutch explain the following:

1.) Why I should send the cheque back through courier and incur expenses when the fault was from Hutch's end. (For a Cheque of Rs. 34, I would incur an expense of equal to or more than Rs. 34)

2.) Why should I send my Identification proof when I am asking for the refund only as per the original records of Hutch. I didn't ask them to process the cheque in any other name. When you have dealt with the same name for more than a year, why do you need identification proofs? You should ask for Identification proofs, if I had changed my name and were asking you to process the cheque in a different name!

3.) Why don't senior employees from Hutch read their emails or reply when the concern is addressed to them?

After being a loyal Corporate Customer of Hutch for 5 years (Nos. 9811193569 and 9899011112), all I got was a frustrating experience at the end when I requested to close my Account.

<u>There are other issues, which I would like to highlight:</u>

1.) The so called Corporate Care Internet Service of Hutch doesn't respond. If they respond, there are only auto-replies and when I got replies after writing several emails, the same content was repeated everytime, despite my clearly writing that the fault was theirs. I have all the emails, which I can present as proof of my allegation.

2.) The Supervisors and Officers of Hutch Customer Service are not at all efficient, as my concern was not at all dealt with seriousness. The management is not interested in solving customer issues.

3.) The attention given to Corporate Accounts is really poor and if this is the quality of service provided to Corporate Customers, I suspect the ordinary/normal customers must be crying their guts out.

I would seriously not recommend anybody to ever use the services of Hutch and say that other service providers such as Bharti, Reliance and TATA Indicom would be far better!

Aghast! I wish you had a re-look at how Customer Service must be run and how service delivery improved!

Regards,

Rangan K

rangank@rediffmail.com