Why is fixing broken things so hard in India?

October 19, 2008 

I’m a die-hard optimist and proponent of living in India. But something tells me if I continue talking to customer care executives of various companies 6-hours-a-day as if it were a part-time job, I would soon end up as a nervous wreck.

Last week Monday through Saturday, I clocked about three hours over 35 calls talking to Su-kam Power systems, Tudor India Limited - marketers of Prestolite Inverter batteries in India, a local real estate agent responsible for getting Khata transfer done, CAT enterprises - a water-proofing solutions company in Bangalore, and finally Domino’s Pizza. The common thread across all these calls - they had offered me a service which was fully paid for; that is still under warranty but the product is now broken and needs to be fixed.

Something seriously ails the customer service industry in India. People in metros such as Bangalore often don’t follow up vigorously to mend broken things because it’s not worth their time and effort. So they are more prone to replace it with a new item. After my repeated calls to Su-Kam and promises of sending an engineer went in vain for over five days, the first reaction from V was to get a new one than go through the inconvenience of a power cut and the torture of waiting endlessly for someone to show up. But I wanted to try so long I could before I gave up because the feeling of trying-hard-and-getting-frustrated is better than the feeling of being cheated. From the dealer who supplied us to the guys who fixed it here to Prestolite, I tried everything under the sun before something positive came out of Tudor India. There was finally a ray of hope on Friday evening to get the faulty inverter battery replaced before the warranty expires in 15 days. But the Tudor gentleman was forthright in saying that uder some premise the warranty will not be granted because there’s just a fortnight left before it expires. So he said he will get it fixed (read: pay me and I will get it done). Knowing how things work around here or having seen it the past few days, I relented to cough up more money and have it replaced than spend another Rs.9,000 for a new battery the right way. Sometimes you can’t be too staright-forward to get work done; you have to work with the system (read: corruption)! Su-Kam gentleman who visited was kind enough to tell me that the Bangalore in-charge is on leave 10 days a month. No wonder I kept calling him and one good thing came of it - LG was entertained to listen to “Jee Karda” song from “Singh is Kinng” movie which was his caller tune so much so that I have the song memorized now from the dozen times I’ve called him with no response.

The bright side of the week is the count stands at one down with inverter hopefully fixed. Now it’s 3 more jobs to get done over the next week; I have my hands full and can’t be more excited to talk to parrots trained to say, “This will be fixed within 2-3 days. Positively!”

It’s 10:00 p.m. right now. And, I’m waiting for my pizza from Domino’s (remember the monthly-once—eating-outside excitement) which was ordered at 7:06 p.m. Oh! they did deliver but the wrong one and I paid for the right one. Hunger pangs killing! The optimist in me tells me to hang on before heating up the leftovers of lunch!

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Comments

4 Responses to “Why is fixing broken things so hard in India?”

  1. Gaurav on October 20th, 2008 8:35 am

    Hay Laxmi..

    I can very well understand your position.
    Being from the same Profession ( i deal in Su-kam inverters in Karnal, Haryan) i know the service for the product is not very good but in the coming months efforts are going on to improve the same.

    Anyways nice writeup…!!

    Best Regards.

    Me:

    Gaurav,

    Glad to know that the Su-kam folks understand there is an issue. Acknowledgment is half the job done. But, I’m weary of promises..so I hope things do improve for sure!

    - Lakshmi

  2. Vaz on October 20th, 2008 1:39 pm

    Hey lady, I have undergone the same trauma at many instances, right from TOI yearly scheme, tap being fixed, fan being fixed and on top of all this , everyone would ask a tip which actually would not be due from my end as it is a free service.

    I also believe in fighting till the end rather than succumbing to circumstances and tantrums.

    Good Going lady:) May be one day things would change.

    Me: We are 1.3 billion plus and counting every second. So it’s not easy after all :)

  3. Alok on October 29th, 2008 9:27 am

    So, did you get the pizza?

    Me: What do you (the realist) think?

  4. Meira on November 6th, 2008 11:21 am

    Well..its our (unfortunately) ‘Chalta Hai’ attitude!

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