customer service? customer harassment?

How much crap can you take?

At the restaurant, when the waiter botches up an order.
At the ticket counter, when they shut down the counter for "lunch" half an hour before lunch time.
When the new branded shirt you bought, last week, shrinks
When the new DVD player you bought, comes without a remote.
When you paid for 2 burgers and realised theres only one when you get back home.

When was the last time you were cheesed of with a (usually very well established) company, for lousy service? This is after they spend millions of monies in advertising trying to lure you and ( get you to emotionally aspire to use their brand.. right!!!) you'd think they would want to make sure you stay happy and satisfied.. But oh no...

Many of these companies are so bad (mobile phone companies top this list) that at one point you really start wondering if its better to do without whaterver it is that u wanted from them in the first palce

One company in particular offers an experience absolutely contrary to its brand name. Forget "relying" on them, its a wonder if you can get the right information out of their help desk the first few times you call them. Their office staff says one thing, the call centre another..the technician yet another.. Pheww..

But to be fair to them...they are polite...lost yes...but well mannered.

Nothing beats this incident which happened to a close friend of mine.
........................................................................

Airtel delhi offered a scheme by which you get a return air ticket to a destination of your choice, on the purchase of a sim card. Since my friend required to fly down to mumbai often, she decided to go in for this over the other operators.

After she subscribed, on enquiring about the air tickets, she was told that she would have to show 3 months of bills for them to release the tickets. Though she wan't informed about it at the time of purchase, she realised it was a fair argument as you would have guys signing up for a connection and then disconnecting after gettng the tickets. So alls fair..

3 months up, bills in hand, she contacts the offices , is directed to another branch..from there to the branch she got the sim from..then to the head office.. (and you thought government offices were bad, think again)..to no avail!

now what we are talking about here are Air tickets.. so eventually..though very pissed at a promise not delivered, my friend did what most of us do.. she gave up for a bit.. a month down the line..she again called up.. she was informed that the scheme was closed! When she told them that shes been following up, she was told " Sorry for the trouble you've gone through ma'm but theres nothing i can do"

think that's bad ..read on.
One month down the line, she had to relocate to Bombay. Still pissed at airtel, she moved without disconnecting the line.

Once she reached bombay, she begain getting calls from airtel on the charges she has to pay as she didnt disconnect the line. She informed them that, she would definitely pay up, but only after someone has addressed the issue of the airtickets or replied to her queries in writing. She also reminded them that she has never defaulted before, always paid her usually huge bills, well before the due date.
She also mailed the same to the airtel management.

The calls didnt stop. They increased. And worse, they started coming from the recovery agents. These uncouth guys actually started harassing her, abusing her in filthy language!!! Be***ot etc... Bloody unacceptable.

When she stopped taking those calls, they then go one step further. They actually place calls to her friends ( information from the bills am sure) posing as guys from ICICI bank delhi etc.. saying that theres an important piece of information to be given to her, pls give us her mumbai no.

So now, she starts getting calls on her mumbai no. They have kinda stopped after she filed a case against them.. but the point is how bloody disgusting can you get?

How much crap can you take, really?

When technology revolts..

Its a fine monday morning ( as much as monday mornings can be) My usually reliable hand phone, an xda atom, suddenly goes into a coma.. so gave it the usual dose of charging , thinking that i probably hadnt charged it properly. An hour passes... two.. but looks like the little baby is really in some deep slumber. So begins a day , nay, a week,of chaos.

Later that day, we lose electricity in our office for half hour...and out goes the internet connection as well.. so i whip out my trustworthy Reliance Net-connect card and... hola Mr. Murphy. It's a no-go!

Lights come back..not the internet. Slowly, the panic begins to set in. mail needs to
go... banner has to go live.. client is screaming.. thinks i am bluffing (all clients do nai?) What saved that day was ..MTNL dial up... we all go back to the basics na?

Net comes back. And as usual many of my mails dont reach my client. So its a case of resending and resending and confirming whether they got da mails.. ( Clients still think im bluffing)

I reach home hoping to finish off some work...get down to it ... realize i need a file from the office...Then the panic really hits. I cant call as i dont have a phone..(we dont have a landline) I cant ping anyone as i cant connect.

So am technologically stranded on an island.

The panic continues into tuesday where i am desperately trying to get things right... but hey we are talking bt Murphy here, right..

And for my net connect card ...getting thru to reliance customer care is a horror story in itself... those blokes there really have no clue on what products their company offers. Its always the same story..After countless calls by ruthi, finally the usb net connect card finds it way to the service centre.. where am told, it will take 15 days to check it out. 15 #&*%ing DAYS!!!!

By the end of thursday that im actually beginning to enjoy life without a cellphone.

And then ofcourse, Richard to the rescue .. gets me a "temp' Sony ericsson to use for now.. Sigh...time to start limping back into the connected world.

Purple no more?

Friday:
Microsoft wants Yahoo! so that it can try and squash google. No one wants to comment. Goog says its not going to affect the way people search so we arent giving a damn. Market says yaaayy oh wow and Y! stock prices soar.
read the real thing here http://www.ciol.com/content/news/mgas/2007/107050501.asp

Sat:
oh no.. nothing of that sort is happening... the courtship is off... what happens to Y! stock.. we'll see
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003694286_microsoft05.html

ho hum.. but i am kinda glad.. you see.. I bleed purple. Really.

A love affair that started the day i logged on to the big bad world of internet through VSNL ( remember that one?. The first site i went to was of course, Hotmail...u know.. sabeer bhatia et al...With all the excitement of a newbie netizen..i did what everyone else was doing.. i went to yahoo! The funky red logo with the cure graphics on its masthead... the oh so adorable emoticons on the Y! msgr.. i was hooked and how..

Years n years later, imagine my reaction when I get a call asking whether I would be interested in doing JUST ONE ad for...Yahoo! India... Interested? YES YES YES a MILLION TIMES YES... Next call was to Ash, who was out gallavanting somewhere during office hours .. told him to come back to office..we had two days to work out some ads for a new client.. After the usual copy writer-ish response : why do all clients wake up on the weekend... 2 days is too less.. not fair.. blah blah blah.. (hes going to kill me for this) he calmed down enough to ask me, 'so who's this new client anyways'
and then when i told him... there was a 3 min long silence at the other end of the phone. PRICELESS.

Since then we've been living, breathing and sleeping Yahoo!... its products... the guidelines... the people...There's nothing more inspiring than clients who are crazily in love with their brand.

Its been over 4 years to that day...the industry has turned around... people have moved.. things have changed...

But whatever (.....) happens,i think i will always remain a little purple.

Text me, mail me, call me, ping me, buzz me, tag me, scrap me, digg me...

So a random-friend-of-yore sends you an invitation...Click here NOW and join or else he will think you ignored him :( boo hoo bawl.. so where does one start or more importantly where does one stop ? You tell yourself, no more sonesi (social networking sites, yaar ) you ignore the first mail... and the second.. by the 9th one you are seriously contemplating whether to sign up or not... looks like the entire world is there ( with all those emails in ur inbox) i mean, imagine being left out on all that wonderful bonding and fun ALL the rest of your friends are having together on that site ...and all that gossip ( ok networking...for u boyz..) then you spend a coupla days adding and sending crappy invitations to other poor sods... you log on every other day, adding friends, sending pings, messages, diggs, scraps...then by the end of a month or two...just as the fatigue sets in ...voila...here comes an invite to yet another sonesi!!!!

Not that i hate them. I absolutely LOVE them. They are dynamic, interactive and form an absolutely crucial part of the rapidly evolving online landscape.
They are adequately equipped to cater to the demands of gen now...
No more long mails.. a one liner ( read : 3 words) scrap on orkut once a month is todays definition of "stayin in touch" ( Yaaaayyy... no more guilt trips) no more mindless IMing.. no more pretending to be offline with pesky relatives even when you are online...

But what makes a sonesi "sticky" ? Is it how it helps the community to reach another more tangible benefit. Like for eg.. getting a job bcoz of the sonesi (linkd in) or that movie clip that you were looking for(youtube).. or yes getting that right solution to a problem(a la Yahoo! answers)..or is it still .. ahh... the good old.. making and meeting new friends( girls, more girls)

Unfortunately/ fortunately every other site worth its byte is attaching the ubiquitous "social networking/community" angle to itself. Unfortunately bcoz some of them are so evidently force fitted its a joke. Nevertheless, its an extremely captivating and interesting phenomenon .. we are all going to get swept along as it elvolves...

After sunsilk gang of girls, the next one up is iblush or some such...then of course theres the big adda ... (will help to have a community of sorts when reliance eventually takes over the country)

All said n done like the recent digg episode proved it..
User is king. Content rules. Community (mob?) rocks.

PS: Amma still complains that i dont call her often.. hey! am trying to be social here :D