Copy of letter to Hutch customer care:
I have recently taken two prepaid connections with Hutch and I regret to say that I have been subject to extremely poor and shoddy customer service.
- I submitted my documents on 3rd Apr 07 and my connection was activated the same day. I took the connection from the Hutch Shop on VN Purav Marg in Chembur. The agent who helped me with the connection was Ratna. Despite having submitted the full set of documents more than a week back, it appears as though the documents were never processed or submitted to your main office from the shop. Or maybe the documents were submitted but not processed at the main office. From the 9th Apr 07, I started receiving SMSes from Hutch saying that my documents have not been submitted.
- In response to the SMS, I called up customer care and spoke with one Dhananjay Pal on 10th Apr 07. This person told me that the documents were showing as accepted and convinced me that my phone would not be disconnected. He said that if the issue came up again, all that I had to do was with call up customer service and that the issue would be immediately resolved over the phone.
- However, on the 11th Apr 07 morning, my phone was disconnected. When I called up customer service, I spoke to one Ashish Jaiswal. Ashish tried to tell me that the problem was with the Hutch Shop in Chembur and that he has contacted them and the phone will be reconnected in one hour. The phone never got reconnected. Also, I found Ashish to be extremely discourteous and rude over the phone. When I asked him what was I supposed to do in the case of an emergency when my phone was not working, his reply was "If it is an emergency, buy a new SIM Card and Phone." Also despite my repeated requests, he was not able to put me through to a senior person or a supervisor. He also kept saying that it would take one hour for the phone to be re-connected and the problem was due to some "temporary technical issues".
- When my phone was not activated again, I called up customer service and spoke to one Tina Parab. She put me through to her supervisor, Pravin Dukheja. Pravin said that I needed to go the Hutch Shop because the shop people were saying that the documents were not submitted. In all these phone calls, I kept asking for the phone number of the Hutch Shop so that I could speak to them over phone but they were not providing the Hutch Shop phone numbers.
- When I reached the Hutch Shop at VN Purav Marg in Chembur, I was told that all the documents were received by them and that they had not been received at the head-office. The agent assisting me was Swati. Swati said that she had put through the request to activate the phone right then and my phones were re-activated in about 10 mins. I am hoping I don't face any more problems with the Hutch service because I do not look forward to going to the Hutch Shop again to resolve the problem.
This entire episode leaves me with a number of questions for which I would like answers or hear your response.
- As a paying customer (remember my account is prepaid, I have already paid for everything), why should the service be so shoddy? Why should I have to spend even one minute without service when the documents have been received and the phone has been activated. Either you should not release the SIM Card unless all the documents have been received, or once they are received, they should be processed promptly. Overall, very poor document management.
- Your Customer Service Agents are very poorly trained. At least two of them (Dhananjay and Ashish) gave me wrong information. None of them was willing to accept that the fault was with Hutch. Also, all of them (Ashish, Swati, Praveen) have the habit of talking over the customer's voice when the customer is still talking. It points to very poor training and supervision of the call center agents.
- I don't understand why the Hutch Shop phone numbers were not given to me despite me repeatedly asking them. A phone company not having a phone number? Very strange! ]
- Finally, it shocked me that I had to personally go to sort the issue out when there was absolutely no fault from my end and the problem was all at Hutch's end. It is nearly 40 degrees outside and I need to travel 15 mins by auto to get to the Hutch Shop in Chembur. I don't care whether the issue is with the Hutch Shop or with someone else. Hutch represents an organization to me that provides me a service and the entire organization has ended up looking very ordinary in my eyes.
I don't know what kind of remedial action you would like to take on this. If you can take all of this as useful feedback and change some of your processes, that will be good for you and I would like to hear what you are planning to do. Please recognize this to be an overall system problem and not a problem with one or two individuals. If you treat this as yet another unhappy customer and want to ignore this email, that's entirely your problem.
For your information, I live in the US and visit India occasionally. I will be headed back by end of April. The reason I had chosen Hutch was because I used to be an older Orange customer for more than 4 years and was very happy with their service. But it looks like your service has degraded very significantly, and I am very unhappy to see this.
From my end, I propose to:
- Make a complaint to the consumer courts on this issue
- Write about this experience in consumer forums and highlight the quality of Hutch's service
- Talk to my friends planning to visit India about Hutch's service
- Never ever use Hutch again
0 comments