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 24th 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 24th. 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!!!
