Cases and charters -simulated real life learning....

Sometimes even the best of B-School case studies do not make as much good sense as your own experience while dealing with utility/service companies. Your real life experiences at times not only bring across examples where as an aggrieved customer you are quite good at identifying the flaws in the process that even the best of minds havent addressed in their company. Have had plenty such instances where a strong reminder of my rights as a consumer along with some logical arguments and threats of a few escalations helps resolve matters.

Be it one of the major Gujarati owned telecom company who provides internet connections, or the local gas agency or even a laptop service centre, all of them do like to take the customer for granted. In the first case it was a company who not only failed to send their first time customer their bills on time, but also ended up deactivating connections for the unpaid bill which was not even received by the customer. The shocked customers had to stream in for resolution to the centre before 8pm to get any resolution done and yes remember to tell the centre to specifically reactivate their account. Tele-help oh well forget it - in this company they would not be able to check your details of specific plans and hence may either be of no help or incorrectly tell you there is no issue. Things just get better, if you wish to disconnect your net you need to visit their single customer care centre before 7 pm on a week day and get it cancelled personally. Also they take 28 days to effect your cancellation so be assured you will be billed for an additional month. While I have successfully protested on the first issue relating to first time customers at their Thane centre and suitably impressed the manager there who promptly got my issue resolved, tackling the others needs more effort as the feedback given to their customer service staff has fallen on deaf ears. Makes you wonder whether the guys who manage the company went to the right school or were born sadists?

The second case is that of a H.P. Gas agency in Mumbai who decided to make a package deal along with the gas company to provide a lighter, a fire extinguisher, a gas stove, an apron, a kg of tea powder as mandatory purchases along with the new gas connection. Well needless to say all these meant a whopping expenditure of six thousand which left me baffled. Escalation to the sales head of the region for the agency through its immediate owner, and a reading of my personal charter of consumer rights soon followed. Also put in some convincing arguments - that there was no way I was going to drink tea (being a hard core coffee freak), or cook in an apron (you kidding me, an apron for making maggi and coffee? ) and that the building had a fire extinguisher & thus my limited cooking would never be a serious danger to me or my building. All these got me somewhere my out go reduced to 4000 from 6000 rupees. A side effect: was gloating over my logical reasoning and negotiation skills for sometime :P - small pleasures...
The gas agency got it again when I went in for my first time refill booking - they made the cardinal sin of not recording my booking, not giving my number, assuring me of delivery in 2 days, not making it in time, and telling me it was my fault when I called them a bit miffed on the third day morning.... So it was time to sing sing my charter of consumer rights again and then they relented and gave me the gas within the same day. .

The last time was with my laptop service centre. A long argument on their not being able to meet the commited deadline and a threat to complain to the main company who had recognized them as an authorised centre lead to me getting a spare/stand by laptop from which I am posting this blog......

Real life case studies are definitely more interesting, appealing and rewarding than those straight jacket B-school ones. Be vocal about your rights and logical in your arguments for best results.