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.
