Today consumer is the victim of big time retail chains & their response mechanism thru call centers.
My case description is simple Home Town promised the delivery on certain date & delayed it and when the material landed at my place it was damaged. There starts the spin of calls to call centers, talking to face lace ever changing names, keeping record of complaint nos. In case my grievance with Home Town the complaint no was crf1259.
The call center system insures comforts for vendors & pains for consumers. This system has following aspects:
1. It’s a faceless interface.
2. You are never talking to the same person again.
3. Informing the issues & following it up is done only by consumer.
4. Even when the matter is getting delayed the vendor carries no responsibility of communicating same to consumer.
5. There is no written proof of communication with the consumer.
6. Every time consumer calls he has to brief whole problem from the beginning, because you are never talking to same person.
7. Vendor also records the calls, which he can use for his advantage as & when required.
8. Vendor is sitting comfortable with part or all the money already with him.
9. The most troublesome part of system to consumer is repetitive interactions with different persons, who all are very cold in response, totally alien to grievance, no sense of urgency as they are facing the problem for first time all this results in raising consumers blood pressure, sometimes with serious long term consequences.
10. At vendors end they have system in place, which geared to receive money immediately on the spot but contrary they have no systems for immediate refunds. All know, how excruciating experience it is to take money back from these large establishments.
We as consumers, at some forum must unite & invent some method by which we come in position to invoke equal amount of urgency, need & responsibility from the side of vendor.
Whatever system is evolved we must get it enforced thru law.
Here is what i thought should be the scenario.
Stage 1. Consumer conveys grievance to the vendor (call center) only once, after that it is the onus of vendor to follow up the matter & update the consumer of every development.
Stage 2. Consumer should never make 2nd call for same grievance to vendor. Instead he should send a fax or a letter by courier, with a proof copy with himself.
Stage 3. If the matter persists the vendor becomes liable for damages due to delay, inconvenience caused & mental torture the refund of the payment made towards article or service.
If this becomes a norm then the vendor would be equally keen to not to let the matter escalate to 2nd or 3rd stage.
Note: During 1st stage consumer must get & store the complaint number provided by vendor. In addition consumer, he can, should record any follow up calls for update from vendor side. This will serve him as record in due course.
Jago Grahak Jago... lets fight together this mental torture thru call centers.
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