***Welcome to my blog***

Suswaagatam... Welcome... Huan yin... Bienvenue... Welkom... Bienvenidos... Merhaba... Irashaimasu... Welkumme...

These days every one is into blogging. From a common surfer to celebrities. I am no celebrity but am sure a common surfer. I was on my surf board (read laptop) and was cruising through the waves of internet when I came across some really good blogs. This triggered an idea to create my own space in the virtual world. I am sure that maintaining the blogging habit and getting topics for the same is going to be difficult but whats the harm in trying?

I knew that learning swimming, guitar and giving a speech in front of a dozen people are all difficult things, but whats the harm in trying? I may not succeed in any or all of them but will have the satisfaction of having tried at least. You may come across people criticizing you or ridiculing you for your efforts but that's all part of the game. Its up to you how you take the criticism and how you move along. If you have the determination and Gods grace then nothing can stop you. Believing in this I am starting in my little e-World.

While you are here dont forget to participate in the opinion poll, read the latest headlines in the 'Happening Right now!!!' section, check out some amazing gadgets and leave your comments. You can also subscribe to this blog using the links under the "Subscribe to this blog" section.

Thanks for your time and Happy Reading...

Mi Mexico restaurant review

I recently dined at Mi Mexico with my family. The food was good no complaints there. But what happened the next day has prompted me to give a 1 star review. When I checked my credit card statement the next day, then did i realize that I was charged more. I promptly called them and they asked me to produce the receipt. I went to Mi Mexico few days after and after looking at my receipt, they produced the receipt that I had "supposedly" signed. To my utter disbelief, I found that my signature was forged on the receipt. They had put additional tip to inflate the total and had put my fake signature there. The owner/manager was very convinced that there was no fault at their end but I am very sure that the amount was different when I signed the receipt and that my signature was forged. Since the amount was not much, I decided not to purse this any further. I have alerted my friends to be aware of this place. I would urge anyone visiting this place to be vigilant of the transactions they do here.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/mi-mexico-buffalo-grove?hrid=Y3RfI0a8WwTzWLEUrY1rIg

Great customer care at Car-X, Wheeling, IL

Please read my Car-X review (Wheeling, IL location) on Yelp. 

Car dealership - A real life comparison

One of the incidents in the past week inspired me to blog about the kind of car dealerships we deal with and how customer service really matters.

This is a perfect example of a dealership who made a sale but lost a customer while the other dealership who did not make a sale but won a customer.

I had purchased a certified used car from http://www.toyotaarlington.com/ last year. Since I needed a car badly, I had to accept a poor 'packaged' deal loaded with an unwanted warranty deal (to bring the APR on my loan down). I even paid extra for Toyota Certification at the dealership which even Toyota Motors wasn't aware of. I never knew that this deal would haunt me even after a year.

When I went to trade-in this car at http://www.muller-honda.com/ I realized the gravity of the poor deal. I was already paying thousands of dollars over the value of the car in loan and to trade in the car for a new one would have meant a loss of thousands of dollars for me due to the poor deal I did with Arlington Toyota. Lance at Muller Honda was very truthful and upfront about the whole thing. He showed me a great new car, I took a test ride and when it came to finances, Lance laid out the honest situation in front of me. He didn't try to pressurize me to take the deal and was courteous all the way. He also explained me things in detail. This was in contrast to what I experienced at Arlington Toyota. They just wanted to have the deal done :(

I had posted a review about Arlington Toyota on Yelp (http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=qEVEgk_hXcyMfrIY45GPQA) and had also written to BBB (http://www.bbb.org/chicago/customer-reviews/ac/4338/3dfc705a579b4c98) so that people are made aware.

I wish if we had more dealerships like Muller Honda around us!!!

Yelp review: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=qEVEgk_hXcyMfrIY45GPQA

Southwest Luv's its customers

I recently flew Southwest (www.southwest.com) with my family from Chicago to California and back. This was not my first time with Southwest and as expected they provided me the 'wow' factor during this trip. First of all I love their 2 bags free policy and their customer service has been always exemplary. I witnessed the same great customer service during my recent trip.

We were in Sacramento to meet and greet our extended family. We had lot of bonhomie, great food and of course a ton of gifts while coming back. We did our best to keep our bags to the maximum permissible weight but unfortunately when we reached the Southwest check-in counter at the Sacramento International Airport, we found that all our bags were overweight.

The airline representative at the counter told me that it would be $75 per overweight bag. Most companies (or airlines) would have seen this as an opportunity to make some cool cash but not Southwest. That's where their customer service is so amazing. The representative offered me another option. She asked me to purchase a Southwest Airline duffle bag for $25 and transfer the extra stuff from the bulky bags to this duffle bag. This was a really simple idea which saved me a good amount of money.

"The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit." Kudos to Southwest on the way they stay focused on their mission statement with acts like these.

No wonder why Customers Luv Southwest!!!

Mind blowing...

It was a Saturday and our visit to the Palladium Mall in Lower Parel was inadvertent. We were searching for some factory outlets and visited the Mall accidently. While window shopping I found a Bose store and since I am a big fan of Bose, we decided to pop in.

The salesperson greeted us with a smile. I wanted my wife to experience the Bose effect and so we decided to look at some of the home theatre systems there. During my discussion with the salesperson I told him that I already own multimedia speakers made by Bose and would like see their other range of products. He was more than happy to show us around. He suggested us to take a demo of one of their newest products and we were already excited.

He took us to a small room which had a sofa and a big wall mounted television. The demo room had five black cloths that looked as if they were covering the typical five speakers of a 5.1-surround system. I assumed that he will be talking about some new home theatre product launched by Bose. Nevertheless we were eager to know more.

The demo started and I observed that the brand name of the television was Bose. I started thinking “When did Bose venture into television sales?” “Must be some custom made TV for the demo”, I thought. The pictures were crystal clear and the image quality was very good. Later on we found out that it was a 46” LCD HDTV. Then came a moment in the demo when the salesperson started lifting the black clothes from the wall one by one. To our surprise there were no speakers behind those black clothes. Heck there wasn't even a woofer in the room. We were shocked when he told us that the excellent sound was coming from the back of the HDTV. It was too good to be true. There were no wires in sight which meant that the HDTV doubled up as the home theatre system. The TV was connected to a receiver which accepts connections from all the other devices (like blue ray player etc) making the TV wire free and uncluttered. The icing on the cake was the universal remote which has very basic controls- power, source, volume, channel up-down and a touch based track pad for controlling everything via the on-screen menu. There was also an iPod dock which connects to the receiver and plays tunes from the iPod via television. Amazing isn't it? This is the new VideoWave technology from Bose and we were thrilled with the demo.

Once we were done with the demo we filled in some feedback forms. Unable to control my curiosity, I asked the salesperson the obvious question, “How much does the unit cost?” I was expecting the cost to be a couple of lakh rupees but he surprised me when he told me “4.75 lacs Sir”. The price was mind boggling so was the experience!!!

Read more about the Bose VideoWave technology here:

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/videowave/index.jsp

Persistence pays yet again!!!

My fight with the customer care system continues and my persistence is showing results. Take for example my recent tryst with the Sundirect customer care.

Here is what happened!!! One of the satellites that beam Sundirect signals went kaput recently. As a result many of their channels went offline and some of the remaining channels had poor signal quality. I initially thought that the rains were playing havoc with the signal but when I called up the Sundirect customer service they told me about the satellite issue. I was told that the issue would be fixed soon. I didn’t realize the ‘soon’ meant ‘a period of over a month’ in this context :)

Anyways I continued my follow up with the customer care and finally got to know that the issue has been fixed and that the signal would now be beamed from a different satellite. It meant that Sundirect would have to realign the dishes of all its customers so the new signal could be acquired. I was told that the realignment would be done for ‘free’ since it’s an issue with Sundirect. I was given the contact information of my areas’ Sundirect distributor.

I called him up and described the issue. He agreed to fix the issue but shocked me by demanding Rs. 250 for the same. When I mentioned that the realignment was ‘free’ as per the company, the distributor won’t budge. During our conversation the distributor realized that I had purchased my connection from the neighboring city and hence he asked me to contact the distributor in the neighboring city. Without many options, I called up the distributor in the neighboring city and he too had some surprises for me. He demanded a service fee of Rs. 150 to fix the issue. I explained him the ‘free’ clause again but he shot back saying that the company doesn't pay him for realignment and I must pay his technician for realignment. I was in no mood to give up and so I mentioned to him that I would be taking up this issue with Sundirect. He was unperturbed.

I called Sundirect customer service again and they asked me to deal with the distributor myself. Now I was caught between the devil and the deep sea. So I decided to make my way out of it. I emailed the nodal officer for Sundirect but there was no response. I finally called him up. One of his colleagues who attended my call promised me prompt action in this whole issue. Within no time I received a call from another person at Sundirect who told me that the technician from Sundirect would visit me in a day or two. He kept his word and sent his technician the very next day. The technician fixed the issue in just 15 minutes and that too for ‘FREE’.

So moral of the story is that “Persistence pays” especially when you are dealing with customer service people in India. Sometimes you have to skip all the lower levels and reach directly to the top for some quick resolutions. I am sure many Sundirect customers across India would be facing the same issue with their distributors. So if you are one of those customers then contact the Sundirect Nodal officers in your circle. Make sure that you lodge a complaint with Sundirect against the errant distributors.