Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

I have been a Standard Chartered Manhattan Platinum card customer for over an year now, the limit which the bank gave me was Rs.x, x is approximately 1/4 of my monthly in-hand salary. Since I got the card I have been surprised about how they arrived at the limit.

I had 2 other credit cards, one of which I have since surrendered. The limits on those were 2.5x and 10x respectively. Of course I know it’s the bank’s prerogative on assigning me a limit, but sometimes its just so ridiculous that you email the bank and ask for a review. Well the 1st time I emailed them, I was asked to email after six months. And when I emailed them after that , they gave me the same lecture about bank using some process blah blah !

Wow, SC really does something different in calculating the limits. The sadder part is that despite all my efforts, I seem to bump into customer service folks who seem to be inherently stupid, don’t make sense and will write anything to close a ticket. It’s the same copy paste lines, this time I got a reply in record 10 minutes from their second level customer care, this shows no research while responding to customer requests, just respond back with the template you have and close the ticket.

Please note I have impeccable credit history with ZERO defaults ever. Someplace somewhere, Standard Chartered bank’s marketing guys are coming up with awesome products while the customer care department is cutting costs and ensuring that customers don’t stick with the bank.

Why do I still stick with them ?

Well they do have a good product, however the lack of service will I am sure one day force me to severe all ties with them and never return to them ever again.

Can you tell us why their customer service sucks ?

Certainly,

1. I ask them to increase my credit limit via their SR system, no response for days. Then when I email them, I get a mail its not approved. Push them a little more and they say its been raised. Then when I send over my income documents, I don’t hear back for some time, another person now tells me the increase was never approved.

2. I redeemed some rewards which includes bonus Vodafone talk time (don’t take it, it’s a pain to redeem), the vendor doesn’t recharge my phone, I complain to Standard Chartered bank and lo and behold, they ask me to call Vodafone up which is a 4th party to all of this drama. I mean, I cannot even swallow the stupidity of the response.

Ref : xxxx

Dear Mr. Sud,

This is with reference to your e-mail dated July 21, 2012.

As informed earlier, we request you to contact M/s Vodafone directly for further assistance.

We regret any inconvenience caused to you in this regard.

Assuring you of our best services always

Yours sincerely,

Sriram Ps

Officer – Customer Care

And there are more instances, every time I am forced to write to their customer care, I feel like banging my head against the wall.

Advice to Standard Chartered folks : Pull your socks up, there is only so much bullshit a customer would take before leaving your bank.

If you watch TV these days, you couldn’t have missed the new Flipkart television advertisements. In the ads, children play the role of grownups and praise Flipkart’s awesome service. However one ad caught my eye, because my experience was a complete 180 degrees from what the ad portrayed. Here is the sort of brief, a child (posing as an adult), tells about how he bought something over the weekend and was impatient to receive it. He contacted customer care and they expedited his delivery or so and he got it on Monday morning. Woohoooo ! Flipkart understands his impatience.

Wait, am I blacklisted that my impatience was met with canned responses and no such understanding ultimately leading me to cancel my order ?

I had to goto USA and for the same needed some TSA approved locks which aren’t broken by the TSA during luggage inspection.

Naturally I searched online and since Flipkart had it listed, I ordered. The delivery data ‘just met’ my requirements so I emailed them confirming the delivery date and what followed was a series of canned unhelpful replies and broken promises unlike what the ad shows :

My Email 1 :

Hi,
I am leaving the country on the night of 13th June, could you please get me an accurate estimate of shipping date for this item ?

Their Reply 1 :

Greetings from Flipkart!
Order Id : xxxxxx
Product : VIP, TSA 3-Dial Combination Lock, TSA3DCBLBLK, Black, Safety Lock, Safety Lock & Strap
We would like to inform you that your order for the above mentioned lock is in the process of fulfillment.
The order would be delivered to you by June 13, 2012. Once the order is shipped, you would receive a shipping confirmation email with tracking details. However, we regret to inform you that will not be able to expedite the delivery as the order would be delivered by the above mentioned date.
We request your understanding and kind cooperation in this regard.

My Email 2 or 3 :

Would have appreciated if you actually read my email instead of sending
another copy paste reply identical to previous one.
Please read my last email and respond.

Their Reply :

Greetings from Flipkart!
Order Id : xxxxx
Product : VIP, TSA 3-Dial Combination Lock, TSA3DCBLBLK, Black, Safety Lock, Safety Lock & Strap
Please be informed that the above mentioned product is available with us and we are currently in the process of procuring the same. This is expected to be delivered to you by June 13, 2012.

And their next email totally blew me away by telling me that there would be a delay of 5-6 business days :

Dear Customer,
Greetings from Flipkart!
Product : "VIP TSA 3-Dial Combination Lock (Black)"
This is to notify you that the shipment of the above mentioned product may be delayed by an additional 3-5 business days.
We are doing our best to deliver the order as soon as possible and will keep you informed if there are any further updates.

—-

As you can see, they didn’t understand my impatience <actually genuine need> and probably lied about their stock status to me and didn’t eventually deliver my order in time leading me to cancel.

After this email I cancelled the order and vowed never to trust them on stuff I need urgently. Promptly went to Shopper’s Stop and bought another brand’s lock for a lesser price serendipitously.

Why I Posted this now : Because their ad is misleading and actually creates an impression that they care about customer needs while shipping.procuring. the truth is that they will ship ASAP stuff which is with them in stock but their CS is unable to even respond personally to people asking for delivery date confirmations and in my case the CS gave me wrong commitments which they were unable to keep eventually. They just depend on luck to meet customer impatience in my experience.

I was dining out with a friend when I commented to him that the waiter seemed to be over-doing the whole ‘I am your server, tell me how is your food act’. It was getting annoying to me and I commented to my friend that he doesn’t need to do it. He reminded me of an incident which would make me skip a particular Subway India restaurant and I understood why some places always make it a point that you feel pleasant after going there.

It was new-year’s eve, we were planning on cooking a good dinner for the night and hang out with friends to ring in the new year. So I had skipped breakfast and hoped to catch a quick bite at the Subway in Jayabheri (Near Kothaguda Area). As usual, I got the robotic greeting from the person there. Waited a few mins for my turn, since it was a Saturday morning they were probably short of staff.

I ordered my favourite breakfast sub (which is bread + meat + eggs) and asked the guy there to add veggies (which are an extra 30 bucks or so, INR). anyway so this guy agrees but later on he says his cashier tells him not to allow it and he flatly refuses to add the veggies or for that matter anything to my sub. Now take notices of the fact that this is my favourite sub and I eat it all the time from this outlet as well as from other outlets. I ask for the manager, he points me to the shabby looking cashier , I say manager or owner, he gives me a number which is always switched off. I give up and ask him to finish whatever he had started making.

Now while all this is happening, I casually tell my friend that I will never visit this outlet again. It happens just like that, 1 bad experience ticks off something in your head and you involuntarily decide never to visit a place again. I decided to rely on the other subway outlet near my home that has no problems accepting my requests and whose workers actually listen to me. The owner of that store also responded well to me when I had complained about a certain issue.

That’s the different that good customer service can make to your business, just keep it in mind and instruct your employees to do the needful

I am going to send across this link to the Subway India folks and see if they can take a hint.

Fresh on the heels of the pathetic Kingfisher Airlines experience we had recently, comes an incredibly good experience. I was travelling last weekend from HYD to Delhi and chose Indigo Airlines , mostly for its on time service. So here is the long and short of it :

1. We departed 15 minutes before scheduled departure time.

2. We landed about 25 minutes before scheduled arrival time.

Check-in : Smooth, barely took 5 minutes, staff was courteous and offered me good seats when I indicated that I was a frequent flier. There was also another person with a portable checking machine, but he skipped me for some reason

Onboard Service :  Very professional, a little too professional ? A little more warmth will go a long way in making passengers feel more comfortable. Also onboard food is too expensive and not really worth the money.

Fares : Somehow Spicejet always manages to get a 1 to 10 rupee upper hand on Indigo prices. Otherwise Indigo is the most economical option on most sectors

So how does it compare to other low cost airlines, in a nutshell :

Indigo vs Kingfisher Airlines : Kingfisher is overhyped, expensive with a very bad CRM, you can see my previous post for more. Their customer care doesn’t even reply to complaints. On the other hand, when I had complained about Indigo’s seating policy last time I flew with them, I got multiple replies. This time the problem seems to have been rectified. I will confirm after my return flight only though

Indigo vs Spicejet : Not much to separate here except the exceptional on time performance of Indigo Airlines vs Spicejet. Last time I took a Spicejet flight at around the same time as this one, it was delayed by over 2 hours.

A rare honour, for this particular experience, I was so delighted to spend more time with my family, I give Indigo a Rating: , however I will reserve more comments for my return flight.

Update : Got a reply from them that they were investigating the issue and would reply soon, been 13 days since then. Not holding my breath if you know what I mean, big thumbs down to Kingfisher Airlines and its customer care.

Rating:

Thank you for your correspondence to us. We sincerely apologize for the delay in our response to you.

We acknowledge your concern regarding the recent experience of your mother with Kingfisher Airlines. We would like to share with you that, on receipt of your email an investigation was initiated on the issue; the time taken for the investigation has regrettably delayed our response. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

We request you to please allow us some more time and we will revert to you soon.

Best Regards,

<name hidden>

Guest Commitment
Kingfisher Airlines 

My mom had to go to Shimla on an emergency and since Kingfisher was the only Airline operating the flight, we booked their service for a price that would be around 5-6 times the cost of a road ticket , ofcourse that is not the point. The ticket was booked through Ezeego1

As you maybe aware Kingfisher operates all its flights through Terminal 3 at Delhi which is outside the city. That day due to bad weather Kingfisher decided to cancel the flight after keeping the people in dark and delaying the flight for a few hours before cancelling it (to their credit they served a subway sandwich in the wait period). They gave the guest choice to take a refund or re-book for another day or they could arrange road transport. Ofcourse my mom didn’t want 5000 rupees worth of road transport to Shimla, so she opted for the refund.

When my 55 year old mother asked for transport back to the city, she was in for a rude shock. The lady at the counter asked for some time after consulting (with god knows who), she told my mother that since we had booked via a travel agent, she wont be providing her with transport back to the city. What an outrageous excuse ? It would be better if they say they don’t give transport, but to deny that over such a frivolous reason was totally unacceptable, how does it matter when they are cancelling the flight, its not like they will be paying commission to the travel agent for the cancelled flight. Anyway, my mom being a non-violent person did not raise a hue and cry. I am sure had she done that , she would have got a cab for the city instantly.

As a result, my 60 year old dad had to make the long trip to terminal 3 and get my mom. Its still fine at this stage except for te stupid reason given by the lady at the counter. What irked me more was that when I complained about the incident via the Kingfisher website where Vijay Mallya assures you he is taking things personally, I didn’t even get a callback from these guys let alone an apology. So truly un-premium service, served with arrogance.

In contrast, Indigo, Spicejet and Jet Airways all made a point to personally apologise and thank me for any bouquets and brickbats I sent their way.

The purpose of this post is just to let people know that Fly Kingfisher may boast of premium service, but our experience was truly third class with them. Will send across this post to them in an email.

Finally I decided to go over to the HD side, and why not get a DVR while we are at it. I decided to upgrade my Tata Sky box to a Tata Sky HD Plus set top box. HD signifies High Definition while plus signifies DVR capabilities. On Wisetechie we cover the installation and the basic formalities,  head on over to IndianTechBlog  for features and usage.

Ordering and Installation : I ordered via the Tata Sky helpline, I paid with my credit card over IVRS, the set top box cost me Rs.3999, 500 rupees less than it would have cost me if I were a new customer. Tata Sky is a move which I consider unfair trade practice has restricted name transfers on Set Top Boxes. That would ensure that people return their set top box to Tata Sky for Rs.300. The engineer who came to install told me that the returned boxes are then used as replacements when someone’s STB goes kaput.

Anyway, 12 hours later I got a call from a Tata Sky engineer wanting to fix an appointment with me. He arrived 30 minutes late for the appointment with a set top box and a dish. He replaced the previous dish because the new STB would need a bigger one. Also since this had a DVR, they would need an additional wire from the Tata Sky dish to our STB.

The carton in all its glory, contains a Set Top Box, Smart Card, HDMI cable, el cheapo batteries, remote and a manual.

Made in Thailand, el cheapo , also notice inflated MRP of 4999.

A view of the backside wiring of Tata Sky Plus HD. This has a FAN

Notice the Ethernet ports and the USB ports, they are marked for future use in the manual. If its future use or TATA Sky couldn’t figure out a use , its anybody’s guess !

After the wiring was done, the installation guys switched on the STB and let the box download the new software, a few calls to the Tata Sky helpline and we were all set, receiving HD channels. For HD channels, Tata Sky charges Rs.50 a month extra on top of your normal package. Its definitely steep, especially for only 6-7 HD channels. Star has the most HD offerings and Star World , Star Movies and Star Plus HD do not have advertisements yet.

Picture quality was as expected much crisper for the HD channels and even non-HD channels improved a lot. I am using a Sony Bravia 40 inch LCD with this box and the difference in non-HD channels was very noticeable.

Above is a snap of the HDMI cable given along with the Tata Sky Plus HD Set Top Box, nothing much to write home about, looking to get a replacement from the United States in hopes of even better signal quality. Anyone knows if gold plated ones are worth it ?

A small overview of the Tata Sky Plus HD remote :

Hope you enjoyed this basic overview of the Tata Sky HD Plus Installation and Ordering process. For more information about features and information about usage and hacks, log onto this IndianTechBlog article.

A special mention for the Tata Sky installation team here, they were thoroughly professional and did their job very very well.