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.

The most difficult thing!!!

Which among these is the most difficult thing to do?

1) Go to the sun and explore it

2) Count the stars in the sky

3) Get a rickshaw to Kalyan railway station

You are spot on. The most difficult thing in this world is to get a public transport vehicle to reach Kalyan railway station in the morning. Regardless of where you live at Kalyan, you will most probably face this problem every morning but if you live near RTO then God save you.

Every morning you can find a bunch of people standing near the RTO anxiously to get a ride to reach Kalyan railway station to catch their respective trains to work. It’s a laborious ordeal. Just when you see an empty rickshaw, people swarm it like a bunch of angry bees and jostle with each other to get one of those coveted seats. Getting the fourth seat (besides the driver) is the most prized. Once a rickshaw leaves; its desperation for the remaining people who are left waiting. You would have to be lucky to get a KDMT (Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Transport) bus at the correct time. KDMT has arranged buses but their frequency is like Haley’s comet.

Living in such areas is becoming frustrating but the prices are not cooling off. People are still paying upwards of Rs. 2500 per sq. ft. to get a home near RTO, Kalyan that too without basic facilities like transport and proper road connections.

So what are the solutions for this problem?

1) Get your own personal vehicle. This is one of the sensible solutions but if you have a family of 4 going to work at different times, how feasible is this solution? Do we need to get 2 wheelers for all in the family? What will one do with the parking of these two wheelers?

2) Make KDMT aware of this issue. They probably are aware of this issue and they have started bus services but unfortunately these services are irregular and don’t serve the purpose many a times.

3) Plead with the rickshaw drives to have more rickshaws around during the morning hour. How reliable is this approach and why would the rickshaw drivers heed to this? They are in demand and will make the most of it.

So ultimately taxpaying citizens are left in the lurch hoping for the best in the days to come.

I think its the same situation elsewhere in the country. Otherwise why would the proposed rickshaw and taxi boycott on August 12th evoke such a great response. Read more at http://www.meterjam.com

Hopefully such boycotts will force the rickshaw and taxi drivers to act sensibly!!!

NDTV - Broadcast Training Programme or Money Minting Machine?

My sister loves journalism and she wants to make a career in journalism someday. One day she came across an advertisement from NDTV about their NDTV Broadcast Training Programme (http://www.ndtvmi.com/). She promptly registered for the same and paid Rs. 1000 as registration fee.

After some days she received an email from NDTV as follows:

Thank you for applying for admission to the NDTV Broadcast Training Programme.

You have been shortlisted to appear for the admission interview, and will be expected to be present at 207 Okhla Industrial Estate, Phase III, New Delhi 110020 at 2:00 pm on the 24^th March 2010.

You will be expected to take an Audio Video Test and appear for an interview. The Audio Video Test is meant to test your screen presence. You will be given a minute to present a prepared piece on a topic of your choice. You may choose to speak either in English or Hindi or both.

The interview is meant to test your aptitude for broadcast journalism. Questions will be asked on current affairs and your personal interests.

Please drop us a mail confirming your attendance. If you have any questions call +91 9711761218 during office hours

This was exciting for her and she was all set for the interview on the 24^th. But she didn’t know the surprises that NDTV would throw at her in the days to come.

She tried contacting NDTV on the phone number mentioned in their email but the phone would always be busy. She tried and tried but to no avail. Then I wrote NDTV an email about this.

My sister has been following up with NDTV regarding the Broadcast Training Programme. She has been asked to appear for an interview at Delhi on the 24th. She is from Mumbai and has some questions before traveling to Delhi. She has been trying to reach NDTV through phone and email but there is no response.

I got a reply from Sumit Singhal (Associate VP at NDTV) as follows:

Dear John,

Someone from the NDTV Media Institute will make a call to her by 22nd March, Monday, for all the answers to her queries.

She never received a call from NDTV and she was getting upset since the interview dates were nearing and she had no answers to her queries yet. She was to travel to Delhi all alone so she had to make sure that she knew the place of the interview, the place to stay etc and we thought NDTV would give us some guidelines but we were wrong.

After some more follows we got the following message from NDTV:

Concern person will call her by Monday to re-schedule the interview. People have rescheduled interviews as per the availability of tickets and that option is open to all requests. Do not worry we try to answer to all her queries and reschedule her on a convenient date.

This answer was soothing but again the end result was very disappointing. After 3 days she got a call from ‘someone’ at NDTV. Following is my email to NDTV regarding the call my sister received.

Yesterday my sister did receive a call from 'someone' at NDTV. Before even she could utter a word, she was told that NDTV cannot guide her because the location information is confidential (what???)and she was also told that the applicants from throughout the country needs to find the NDTV locations on their own using Google maps(??? Are you kidding me) and arrive for the interview.

Sorry to say this but I feel this is ridiculous. How is a candidate suppose to come to New Delhi from Mumbai without knowing which station to get down (N Delhi or H Nizamuddin), which hotel to stay, where to go for the interview? She was also told that she won’t be able to contact NDTV on the phone numbers that you had advertised on your website because those phone numbers are confidential!!! What is the 'confidentiality' all about? I thought she was appearing for a broadcast training course at NDTV and not for a secret government service. You have your contact information listed on your website but unfortunately no one is reachable. She was also told that the interview date cannot be rescheduled but you had mentioned that the interview could be rescheduled. So why this confusion and why such a disappointing response?

As a brother of an ambitious sister it pains to know that she is very far from fulfilling her dream with NDTV only because of such small issues. Why don’t you have a dedicated HR department that can take care of the applicants’ queries and guide them? As you know it is not easy for outstation candidates to arrive for the interviews without necessary preparations and research.

I hope you understand my point here. Please forward this query/suggestion to your concerned department as well and let me know of your thoughts on this one.

Our concern was forwarded to Mr. Hassan with the following message:

Dear John

I am forwarding this to Mr. Mohd Hassan. He can be reached on 011-66176274 between 10:00 am-5:30 pm during weekdays.

We tried reaching Mr. Hassan for a week but the above number was always busy. I was getting upset and then I sent NDTV and email again saying:

Are the selections done? My sister tried calling Mr Hassan only to find the phone lines busy all the time. So what happens now? Are there more interview slots available?

Mr Hassan was quick to respond with the following message:

We had rescheduled her interview. Further there are no more interview slots available.

I was furious as well as shocked to read this. I shot back saying:

When did you reschedule her interview? As far as I know she never received any calls for rescheduling. In fact she couldn't reach you because your phone line was always busy.

I expected a better support system for candidates at NDTV but looks like I was wrong.

Mr Hassan and NDTV decided to keep quiet but I would send them a reminder every day. Finally after almost 2 weeks, Mr Hassan had this arrogant reply for me:

The matter has no further updates. The last update was on Mar 30, 2010, which stands.

Hence the matter stands closed.

He had the audacity to declare this matter as closed but I was not going down without a fight and now I wanted my money back. So I replied:

Thanks for the quick and arrogant reply Hassan. I guess you must go over the entire email chain again. It was promised that my sister’s interview would be rescheduled but it never happened. She wasn't even given any answers to all the queries she had and now you say that the matter is closed. I fail to understand this.

Well if you really think that the matter is closed, then please refund the registration fees. Think about it, she did all the registration formalities (including paying the fees on time) and she couldn't even appear for the interview. So what's the whole point paying you the registration fee? Does it make any sense?

So I request you to please refund our amount at the earliest.

It’s been two weeks since I started following up the refund matter but now NDTV doesn’t even care to reply to my query. They charged Rs. 1000 per candidate for registration and if 100 people applied, they made a handsome Rs. 100,000 without many efforts and they never cared about the candidates and their concerns. So is this really a broadcast training course or a money minting machine? Anyways I will continue to follow up this matter until I get a satisfactory response.

Meanwhile I am taking efforts to highlight this issue to as many people as possible including the top management at NDTV. I hope someone is taking note of this!!!