Monday, January 31, 2011

Why you should think zillion times before buying an Indian branded product

Disclaimer : The following post was written in TE, by dj_faithless. He shared his recent experience with Microtek. Over to his own words :

To whomsoever it may concern. This is supposed to be a Stinker for you.

Dear Microtek,

I’ve been forced to write this complaint or feedback due to the utter incompetence shown by almost each & every department in your Mumbai & Delhi branches. You should really get the name of your company changed to MicroBRAINS because that’s what the employees are.
From the minute I’ve taken a 600 VA UPS from your below par company, I’ve had enough issues to even trouble an entire city. Why do you’ll even bother to sell your non-sensical, bullshit UPS when you’ll don’t want to give service?

It all started with both the 600 VA UPS’ I took from your garbage distributor in Thane called PACIFIC. The UPS cost me Rs.3300 (including octroi) & a FOC home delivery). As soon as I got the UPS, I noticed clicking sounds on both of them. I lodged a complaint with the Microtek office in Andheri & the engineer told me that I can give it back to the distributor so that I can have a replacement on both the pieces.
After I gave the UPS back, the Microtek engineer checked that 1 piece was faulty & replaced something on it. He said that the other piece was working fine & I can take both the pieces back. I took a bike, drove 11 kms & picked up both the UPS’ to test them at my place. To my disgust, they still didn’t work. One of them gave the clicking sounds & did not even give any backup. The other one I tested at my friends place who stays close by to me & his also turned out to give clicking sounds without any backup.

P.S. I did charge the UPS for 10 hours before using it.

I then again called the Microtek service center & asked for an engineer to be sent. The engineer changed the board twice & realized that the UPS can’t take the load of a 19” LCD Viewsonic monitor (VA 1912wb). I told him that at my friends place he has a 15” CRT monitor, it doesn’t even work on that. He said that he will have to log a call separately.
At this point of time I was at shock & awe as 2 weeks were almost past & not once the UPS had worked. Also to add to my woes, our dimwit MSEB was cutting power for 10 seconds nearly 5 times a day which was annoying the hell out of me.

I again called the Microtek Andheri service center & asked to speak to some higher authority. A guy named Chandrakant comes on the phone who has NO technical knowledge of anything & gives the phone to his compatriot whose name I didn’t unfortunately catch.
From here it starts getting worse. This guy who comes on the phone tells me that my 19” LCD will not work on Microtek’s 600 VA. I’m like “Are you joking? My APC 500 VA worked fine for 6 years. It took load of my 17” CRT & later 19” LCD with 10 mins backup. He’s like this is not possible. I told him come & test it at my place. He says “How can you say such a thing?”. From this moment, this guy started howling on the phone. He sounded like a complete retard, with absolutely no manners on how to speak with a customer. My blood temper rose & I told this guy to piss off. I again spoke to Chandrakant who told me that I’ll have to speak to Pacific if I want a refund.

Then I called Pacific & told that I want a complete refund of my money & you can take your garbage Microtek UPS & shove them up. 1st somebody tells me a refund is not possible as he can’t resell an open UPS. I told him that I already spoke to Chandrakant & you correspond with him directly. After 2 days of chasing this issue, Chandrakant (the liar that he is) tells me that he cannot get through Pacific & the Pacific people tell me that Chandrakant’s phone always comes busy. This is now becoming a huge joke. Both are blatantly lying through their teeth as I got through on the 1st instance itself when I tried their respective numbers.
Finally, after another 10 calls, the guy at Pacific decides that he will give me the refund minus the Octroi. He puts this in such a shrewd manner implying that “Either take it or piss off”. I replied “Why should I pay for Octroi when the UPS never worked even once. And after all this pre-historic customer service I’ve got from both Pacific & Microtek’s service center you expect me to pay it?? “ He said ” Nothing more I can do”. Pacific have to be the worst distributors in the history of this planet.

I then called the Delhi H.O. of Microtek & spoke to the UPS in charge of Mumbai namely Ajay who said he will try to sort it out. After taking my number & details, he promised a callback. At this point of time I knew I was not getting it so I called them again (STD call to New Delhi). Ajay then calls me back & puts me on conference with guess who?? Yes, it’s the douchebag from the Mumbai service center who sounds like the illiterate paan chewing retard that he is. He now tells me that he can tweak the UPS so that it works with my PC. I told him “Why you could not do this before?”. He says ”Because you’ve faced so much difficulty, we’re doing this as a Goodwill gesture”. I’m like “Wtf? You gotta be kidding me. Only after a customer goes through so much then you decide to something like this for him? I want a complete refund. I’m not going through this melodrama again. Balls to you & your UPS”. This guy has the nerve to again start howling on the phone & tells me that “Stop doing timepass on the phone”.

From here on I got even more annoyed, cut the phone, called Ajay again & told him take your Godforsaken UPS back & tell Pacific to give all my money. Ajay again promised that he will try to sort this out & give me a callback which by now I knew I won’t be getting back. Today again I tried calling Ajay, 1st I get a response saying he is not there & the guy hangs up on me. 2nd guy says he’s not at his desk & refuses to give his cell number & again hangs up on me.

Conclusion (Moral of the story):

1. Never buy a cheap Indian brand. They’re cheap in all senses i.e. Quality of product, quality of service, quality of mentality (All douchebags)

2. Quality never comes at a cheap price. You pay peanuts, you get peanuts.

3. Never buy a Microtek product.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks Avi for posting up my grievances on your website. I do hope this experience helps others. As I always say "Learn from other ppl's experiences/mistakes" :D

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  2. Wait, I will soon post about that DTH thing :D

    Hope it reaches mass and will be helpful to others :)

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  3. really interesting update...thank you for sharing this..

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  4. You're welcome Soumya :)

    time to let everyone know

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  5. i donn think evry Microtek product is soo cheap..

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