Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

I feel really funny writing this post, a large number of posts (by multiple authors) on this blog are about companies refusing to honour warranties, giving bad customer service and/or ruining customer products. When we started this blog, we thought of it as a technology blog, talking about the latest technology marvels hitting the market.

Soon, our outlook to the blog changed, we realised that with the growing popularity of the blog, we had another power in our hands. The power to help consumers. Its very simple actually for the companies, attend to your customers or the customer plasters the internet with his experience which in turn ensures that as time progresses more and more customers find out how you ill-treat customers and in effect shy away from buying your product and services.

So if they stand to lose customers, why do companies still do it ?

1. The upper Management doesn’t know – This is the most common reason. The management of any good company would not want a single unhappy customer let alone websites dedicated to reveal their incompetence. Usually the first level customer care staff in companies is little educated and usually dont get to show influence anywhere. So when a poor customer calls them up, its the start of their power trip. They take the customer for a ride until the top management finds out and crucifies them.

2. The company cant handle it – This usually happens in telecom companies and Internet companies (You know the ones I am talking about) . They just cant handle the customer pressure for good services. They grow like crazy via aggressive pricing but are unable to get enough technically sound people to form a good customer service team.

3. The company doesn’t care – This happens in extremely big conglomerates and huge companies. Smaller and midsize companies cant afford to treat their customers like this. You will find multiple examples on this blog only wherein super large companies didn’t even respond to bad PR because they think that they are untouchable and invincible. Losing a 100 customers doesnt mean anything to them since they would gain a 1000 more with a Rs.10 drop in pricing. Sad but true !

4. The company threatens legally – This does work, and boy does it work. You can take down the original complaint, but now you have 10000 times more direct and powerful ammunition to use against the company. Threatening free speech and bloggers is the biggest sin a company can commit. Examples can be found all over the Internet.

So if you are a company who is affected by bad blogger reviews or customer testimonials, there is only 1 way you can do better, that is by attending to those complaints. Here I would like to mention a few companies which in my opinion and experience do take consumer complaints seriously :

1. Eureka Forbes – This has to be the most proactive company in terms of taking complaints seriously. I had a problem with a local franchisee and one email to these guys via Mouthshut resulted in the franchisee being crucified.

2. Hyundai – We had a problem with the dry cleaning done during a servicing, an email to the company meant an instant waiver of dry cleaning for the next time from the service center.

3. TNT Courier – They had once not delivered a package to me, a review here and one of their employees fully co-ordinated an effort to get the package to me and I had the package in my hand by next evening.

For the ones who dont, feel free to check out our archives

If you are a blogger and have been shortchanged by a company, write a review (with truth only, since if they want to pursue legally, false allegations will rule against you), email the company a copy of the review and tell them how so many people are reading about how they treat customers. That usually gets their attention.

The car in happier times

I own a Maruti 800 car which I like to maintain, the first owners of the car were a little careless which caused the car to rust at a few places, but ever since I have got the car I have tried to maintain it well. One of the most important things to maintaining a car well is of course good servicing from an Authorised Service Center.

If you search around the internet, you realise that Maruti Service Masters is supposed to be the best (and the most expensive) service centre in New Delhi. I took a day off as there is a lot of rush on weekends and was off to their service centre. The 1st time I used them they had messed up the butterfly valves in my engine, at that time I thought it might be an exception to the kind of service they offer.

At the service center, I noticed a distinct lack of concern for the customer, they get a lot of customers due to their name so do not need to take customer delight seriously.The reception person was more interested in passing the blame rather than assigning a SA and pointed me to a senior who told me they are short of staff. In the middle of the week ? I waited for half an hour before a service advisor came out and actually took down my problems.

He advised some changes, one of them un-necessary, he recommended the change of the water pump which I agreed to as he said it would lead to better fuel efficiency and smoother performance. The car servicing estimate came out to Rs. 11000 , which is pretty much near the resale value of the 14 year old car, but it being my first ever car I agreed to the uber expensive service with the assurance that engine work be carried out by an experienced mechanic who understands the old Japanese carburettor engines.

The service took one whole day and next day when I came the car was dirty from the outside, while I made payments, the car was wiped once more and cleaned for outer appearance.

Here is where it went downhill for me:

1. The service advisor insisted on a blank feedback card, thinking at that time that he had done an impeccable job, I agreed and gave him the blank feedback form which he literally snatched from my hands. He had given me a test drive.

2. On reaching home, I rolled up the windows and saw major brown dust on the windows, I didn’t feel it was worth the concern and wiped it myself.

3. After 2 days I took out the car and noticed engine oil underneath the car and lots of it. I called the service advisor and asked him what I should do, his response was to bring the car on a weekday. He did not offer to get it collected from my home or to service it on a weekend. He said there is too much rush on weekends.

4. The next day I went to college , at the college parking I noticed a super large amount of engine oil leakage, scared, I came back home early and stopped using the car so as not to cause engine damage. Also the car was giving blue smoke on cold starts.

5. Angry, I wrote 2 emails to Maruti to which I got automated responses, I decided to get the engine fixed outside the MSM as engine oil was low and I couldn’t go to their workshop with a car low on engine oil and leaking it steadily. The same day the customer care lady called me, she was apologetic, +1 to MSM here but she couldn’t really help me, promised to get back to me.

6. She didn’t get back for 7 more days, I got the timing seal issue fixed and paid 900 to the local garage to repair the problem + cost of engine oil. The blue smoke problem has persisted. She called again after 7 days and again apologised but didn’t offer to do anything, did ask me to choose MSM for my next service. I told her I would never like to visit them again.

7. I emailed Maruti and asked for a fresh feedback form to incorporate the low level of service given to me. I got no response. I even told them about blank feedback being collected, no response to that too. 3-4 days later, dad got a call from the service advisor, he gave him my number, I got the call during class and was unable to pick it up. So the grand total of 1 missed call was received by me.

8. The blue smoke at cold start issue was discussed with an engineer at Maruti (who prefers to remain anonymous), he says the MSM people probably ruptured a valve seal,

This causes engine oil to leak overnight and when I do a cold start, I see blue smoke. He told me that complaints are a regular feature at MSM and they cant handle the huge rush. Most complaints are swept under the carpet.

He told me the timing seal issue was a direct consequence of bad workmanship during water pump change.

I have decided to take things to a logical conclusion, I will keep contacting Maruti till they accept that the levels of service are actually below par at Maruti Service Masters Delhi and I have asked for them to repair my car’s blue smoke issue at another Authorised Service Center free of cost.

Till then, let this serve as a warning to anyone looking to get their car serviced at Maruti Service Masters Okhla, they seem good, but very little accountability. One expects this from them but when the company also ignores customer feedback, you know its a problem.

First a little background on the whole cell phone business, I love mobile phones. My first tryst with a powerful phone was with a Nokia 3100, ok do i hear you laughing ? , well the Nokia 3100 was a Series 40 phone and the 1st one for  which huge amounts of customizations were available and possible via wap sites (most popular one being the ones hosted on tagtag.com , those were the days ).

Anyway , since then I have had an Imate (JAQ) (pathetic service in India),  an Asus (P320) phone (bad build quality), LG (M550) (bad battery and availability of spare parts), a Sony Ericsson (K700i) (awesome phone, no complaints, but I hear service is bad anyway).

I have also briefly used the Samsung C100 (good phone) and Nokia E71 (which is my dad’s phone). Now the Nokia E71 is a powerful phone (not to mention expensive for my pocket too). So its the price factor where the Nokia E63 enters, firstly the looks and physical features.

The Nokia E63 has a plastic look with a matte finish , the E71 has a metallic look which makes it look much more classy.  The metallic look is also a fingerprint magnet and this problem is automatically solved in our Nokia E63 phone. I bought the phone from US BTW under a crazy Amazon deal. The phone has a similar keyboard with a small exception, the spacebar key is smaller than your E71 and allows you to start the flashlight instantly. The smaller spacebar is infact a hindrance to typing if you have big hands like me.

Other than that the E63 lacks GPS, I had grown quite fond of GPS and its omission is an obvious down-point. You can however pair up the Nokia E63 with a bluetooth GPS device.

This was the 1st part of the review, you may read the 2nd part at Indiantechblog.com

I recently started using the Kensington Ci70 wireless mouse on my notebook computer and therefore decided to share my views and findings with the readers of this blog.

The Kensington Ci70 K72276US is a very pleasant mouse to work and play with. Its highly responsive, and easier to control. The main issue with my Logitech V series bluetooth mouse was infact its fast scrolling and sensitivity which wasnt very customizable even via the mouse setting sensitivity controls. But this mouse is almost perfect. I have never had an issue with sensitivity or anything else. The scroll wheel is also perfect and the batteries in the mouse are still the original ones and I have been using this mouse for a long time. Its duracell by the way. The wireless dongle fits snugly under the mouse and it also has a sleep mode to conserve power. You need to press any button to wake it up after it enters the sleep mode and stops tracking movements.

Overall the mouse was a very satisfying purchase and if you are looking for a good and decent wireless mouse, this is the one for you.

I had bought this mouse from US on a deal, dont know if the Kensington Ci70 K72276US is available in India or not, but if it is, do get it.

Update : By working with Ferns N Petals customer care, we have been able to bring this issue to resolution

Regular readers may remember a previous post on Ferns and Petals. This is in continuation to that, I will give a short recap anyway. So here goes, I had sent a bouquet of flowers to my dad on his birthday via Ferns and Petals‘s official website fnp.in. And it turned out to be one of the worst decisions of my life.

The flowers were decayed and browning, the buds hadn’t opened in a number of flowers, they weren’t fresh and to rub salt to our wounds, the design was different from what was on the website. So going ahead, I wrote an email to these guys asking them to replace the flowers, got no response.

Then I filed a Paypal dispute against these thieves, I got a reply after a few days :

We have received a complaint from your side for the below order.

Please advice what will be the best way to correct the mistake done from our vendor side.

Awaiting for your reply.

Thanks and Regards

Amit

This had travelled a large way inside their company , anyway I asked them to send a gift of the same value as the flowers to my dad as compensation and to set things right so that I use their services in the future as well.

But by now they probably realized that Paypal disputes for Significantly not as Described aren’t handled unless they happened via Ebay, so I never got a reply .

New Update

They replied to me after I sent this link saying that they had never received my earlier mail, they sent my dad a gift of the same value as the flowers I has purchased earlier, my parents confirmed its of good quality. Hence all’s well that ends well , maybe I will give them another try later on as eventually the customer care did come through even if it was after many days.

Our good friends at RocketXL and EA just informed us that the much awaited platform game G.I. JOE : Rise of the Cobra has been released. The launch is done to coincide with the releases of the movie. The game was officially released on 4th August 2009.

The game’s storyline begins where the movie’s storyline ends. You can choose the G.I. Joe of your liking as your main player, there is also a single player co-op mode so you can play with your friend.

The game is made by Electronic Arts. We are waiting for our review copy currently. But if you are a G.I. Joe fan, go grab your copy. Needless to say the storyline and game-play look awesome, but the graphics look a little sketchy (probably due to the Youtube scaling effect).

Official Website of the game: http://gijoe.ea.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/GI-Joe-The-Rise-of-Cobra-The-Game/92822101502

Console(s) : PS3, PSP, XBox 360, Nintendo DS,Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2

Lined up for Review : PSP games, Lots of them !