Customer (dis)service

The past couple of weeks have made me wonder whether there really exists such a thing as Customer Service in India. The move to our new home entailed moving our satellite TV connection, broadband, water purifier among other things. We started enquiring about the maximum lead time for moving these service more than a month prior to the actual date of moving. Everyone gave us timelines from 3 days to 5 days. We tried to play safe and requested these services with 2-3 days more than the timelines given by these companies. Little did we know that we should not judge a company by its sales department, which is always extremely responsive, attentive to customer needs and goes out of the way to fit in your schedule. The true picture of a company is reflected by its customer service department.

Some of the companies that have left a very bad taste for us due to their extremely unprofessional handling of service requests are -

• Tata Sky - it by far tops the list of poorest customer service providers. For servicing simplest of service requests like change of address in their records, they took more than a month. For changing the package, we were given two totally different details & tariffs by two of their service reps. Even making payments through their voice response systems has been a challenge. I unsuccessfully tried making the payment for 1.5 hours before giving up.
• Eureka Forbes - We needed to move our Aqua Guard water purifier to the new home. They seem to have very selective way of handling different types of services. When we called them to renew our annual maintenance contract for another year AND for moving the purifier to the new home, they came within an hour for the contract renewal. But the service for moving the purifier is yet to be serviced, after at least fifteen follow up calls in the past 4 days and threats of taking them to consumer court
• Airtel Broadband - I was most disappointed by Airtel, because all along I had always recommended Airtel broadband to everyone in the past as I had never faced any problem with their connection. They had assured us of getting our connection moved to the new home within 3 days. It has been 5 days and still counting after receiving multiple 'within 24 hrs it will be done' assurances. I can foresee many days of no internet connection ahead
• LG - We had placed a simple request of checking the motor of our microwave oven (as it made some noise) and it took them over a month to service it after innumerable calls to their service centers

I will definitely think many times before taking any more products from these companies. The unfortunate part is, all of these companies are renowned and are good when it comes to sales but they are extremely apathetic when it comes to customer service. We keep hearing that customer is the king these days but I, for one, definitely don't feel like a king (or queen) after the so-called service being meted out to me.