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On Diwali, we bought a dining table from LifeStyle Furnishers, Kirti Nagar, New Delhi. The name of the salesperson was Diwaker Sharma. Before delivering the dining table, he called me and fixed a time for delivery. The dining table arrived bur need a little bit of touching. So I called him and he promised to send his people after couple days as he said they were busy with the Diwali rush. He told me that he will call me. I thought to myself, haven,t I heard that before. When have sales people called after making a sale. Well, I was surprised. Two days later he called me to set up an appointment so that his men could come and do the required touching up. It was a pleasant surprise that his people came on the appointed time and everything worked out smoothly.

I have always maintained that companies do not treat their customer as “king.” They keep saying it but they do not walk their talk. I had problems with HP Laptop and it took quite an effort for me to get justice. I have talked about this in brief in the “Tips” section of my website www.customermath.com or for complete details you can read my book “Customer Icebergs.” I had used an innovative ploy, that is, I had made a request to HP (Hewlett Packard) that I would like to return the laptop to the HP CEO along with my family and that we will not say a word. We will just leave the “lemon” laptop with him so that he can realize what kind of product he was selling. Ultimately, my problem was resolved but they tried every trick in the trade to avoid settling my problem. But I am a persistent guy.

I thought that maybe it was Airtel alone which bills its customers without their orders but Vodafone does it too. This is evident from the email that I received from a harassed customer, Jigar Goks. The contents of the email given below are self explanatory.

Telecom companies in India have found a new way to sell. Whenever they are short on their sales or profit targets, they just bill you for services not ordered by you.

I had just finished writing the post on “Do no call Registry” when this incident happened. I am trying to get a payment gateway for my website so I had called IndiaMart to set up a meeting with their sales people as they provide payment gateway. I talked to Mahesh who told me that he has passed on a message to the salesperson and that he will call today. But nobody called. I reminded Mahesh a number of times and everytime he told me that the person will call. But nobody called. Today morning I again spoke to Mahesh and this is how the conversation went.

Sometime back, I had mentioned in one of my blogs that why are we, as a customer, asked to register our names and telephones to stop getting calls which are an invasion of privacy as well as illegal. According to law, unsolicited calls are illegal. The court has also fined the telecom companies as well the association of mobile operators. I felt that it should be other way round, that is, whichever customer wants to receive calls should register their names and telephone numbers. Now this is what the Supreme Court has also suggested.