This is a different kind of story.
One that doesn't spiral into its moral, but one that simply begins from it.
"A promise is easier made that kept."
Over a year ago, my parents bought a portable internet device. You know,
it's one of those plug-n-play sorts that occupies one of the USB ports, rather
aimlessly. The eager salesman had promised them an up to 3.1 Mbps speed.
A year later, we're still waiting for that to happen, but that's another story altogether.
Though my folks have been quite happy with its performance, very recently the inevitable occured.Webpages refused to open a fortnight before the bill was due. So we tried again, same outcome.What followed was a series of disconnections and reinstallations. Still no result.
So we chose the bravest of the lot (read, the person with the most time on their hands) and had him call customer support.
"We'll answer your call within 5 rings" rang the advertisement in my mind as i waited for a human voice (Promise broken). A hapless soul finally answered, I say hapless because I knew my way around the bill better than him, and that's never a good sign. He felt the need for placing me on hold every time I asked him a question. Once he forgot to hit the button before he yelled out to his supervisor - "Yaar Vijay, kya karu" (What should I do, Vijay?).
He promised that he'd figure it out and was indeed pleased to help me. Eventually i spoke to the supervisor, who explained, in a garble of jargon and broken english, something about an unbilled amount. He ended with an apology and a promise to help fix this. He couldn't.
So, the next day we went to the company's showroom, singled out the brightest face behind the counter, and explained everything to him, he looked into our eyes and confidently promised to help. Ten minutes later, he gave up. He directed us to customer support, and with the same level of sincerity, explained they would be able to help. So I called back, spoke to another floor supervisor, Radha, and explained the entire episode to her. She assured us she would look into the case and all the adjoining notes, confirmed our numbers on the account, and left us with a promise of calling back in 30 minutes. An hour of waiting later, I called back and demanded to speak to Radha, a name people in this centre hadn't ever heard. So over a few expletives and interspersed apologies, I was able to tell yet another person in the world how my internet had suddenly stopped working.
This was a week ago, during which we also got the number of the regional manager and called him. Having reached my limit, for both apologies and the lack of internet, I just went and made an interim payment, and have now decided to wait for the bill, and to decide whether I want to continue.
Two things I'd like to point out:
1. I'm not blaming just one organization - anyone who's ever called into any call centre will echo my sentiments.
2. If products don't live up to their promises, how can you expect its advertising and customer support to?
