Customer service engagement from Reliance
September 9th, 2010 § 13 Comments
This would be a funny story if it were not so stressful. A certain person (let’s call him P) did not pay his Reliance Netconnect bills. The customer care duly called him up on the alternative number provided in his profile asking him to pay up.
The glitch was that alternative number provided was mine.
Now, P could have done that by mistake or, deliberately. I am not too bothered about figuring that out. What did ensue is that the customer service agents kept calling up over a period of 3 months each time exhorting paying the bill. Not once did they pause and listen. And since it was a new agent each time, the story had to be repeated afresh. Some of the agents are fairly abusive, some do not comprehend English and keep interrupting in the local language or, Hindi.
Finally, I write in to the customer care email address. The mail trail begins with each agent misunderstanding the story and calling to say that “this has been put to the concerned department”.
Today I get a call saying that the next time a customer agent calls up I need to ask the number for which P is being asked to pay up and notify the customer center of the same. Since given the name of P and his alternate number they cannot figure out what is the original Reliance number/Account number.
In other words, it is my duty to fix what is broken at Reliance’s CRM end.
And that is what it is all about customer service.
LOL same thing happened few months back.
I have had similar experience with Tata, HDFC
Ahh ! So there are other organizations that act equally hilariously
I have a similar story to tell. I bought an additional Reliance Netconnect card, and was issued a ZTE unit, whose MacOSX drivers sucked 100 year old ostrich eggs, crashing the machine at will. I returned the unit within 24 hours, and was given a Huawei unit in exchange. That worked (my other card is also a Huawei), but Reliance was unable to activate the card, because activation was possible only on a Windows machine. After a battle of about a week, they took back the card, and returned my money.
End of story? No way!
Beginning the next month, I started getting followup calls from Reliance about rentals for BOTH the cards! No amount of explaining would resolve this problem. They even sent hefty “collection agents” who couldn’t speak English and who were extremely abusive (shades of Citibank!), and would call at all hour of the day.
Finally I documented everything, and sent a formal notice to Reliance, saying that I was going to the consumer court. THAT miraculously shut down the harassment, and now I get only one solitary call every month. Since I know all the call centre numbers now, I just disconnect the call.
Reliance has some SERIOUS issues with customer care!
The first point is that they don’t listen or read. That is what cascades all these problems. What is a ‘formal notice’ ?
“Formal Notice” was an email summarising the entire sordid tale, with references, phone numbers, etc. addressed to about a dozen people in Reliance, including some folks fairly high up. The note clearly said that the next contact from me would be via my lawyer and the consumer court.
tell them to go cut the connection and send a court order and then make millions by suing them for harrasment.
Since the connection isn’t mine in the first place wouldn’t asking them to disconnect (why haven’t they done so after 3 months is a mystery) be a bad thing to do ?
I had a similar problem with Airtel some years back. To cut a long story short. I had personally gone to the Airtel head office in Okhla and paid my dues and submitted my application for disconnection.
But after a few months, they started sending calls asking for rental for the last few months, and soon after started sending people to my apartment.
From a talk I had with a pretty senior guy at a reputed finance company, it seems that after a few months, providers like Airtel *sell* these liabilities (non-paying customer) at a good discount to collecting agencies. These collecting agencies then stop caring about why you had to pay up money, and focus on just getting the money.
I found something which worked for me to defend myself against these guys. Whenever a person came, I started asking for the bill against which the payment was made. I made the case, that just landing up and asking for money without bill is extortion and I would just go to the local police complaining the same. The people stopped coming soon after. The reason it works is that, the provider by this time has completely washed his hands off me, and there is no way for the collection agency to give me the bill.
In recent years, it seems that the courts have banned external collection agencies, so these ideas might not work for everybody.
“Customer Care” phrase should not use at all!
The term “Customer Care” is correct actually, the Customer has to be CAREful
Why groubal, Why Now?
Many Americans are fearful and frustrated as they try their best to cope with everyday life in a very uncertain world. The American Consumer is growing angry, irritated and simply fed up with how big business is treating them and ignoring their grievances. People’s voices are not being heard and this widespread condition is breeding serious resentment across all demographics and there is a tipping point for all this hostility on the near horizon.
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Groubal is the right platform at the right time. Groubal is for everyone and anyone that has a bone to pick with big business; rich man poor man matters not because the stakes will never be higher than they are today. Groubalers who take our stage come away with the feeling of redemption, with conviction and viewable evidence that their voice matters and counts for something. The time is NOW for the people to be heard and for businesses large and small to be Responsible and Reactive to the masses. Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong.
In any case, you can always ask these guys next time for the bill, and when they come, you can point out that you are not the person in the bill, so fsck off.