I had purchased a Forbes Designa water purifier in mid 2005 and currently on a 2 yr AMC(Annual Maintenance Contract). Never seen such a pathetic customer service . I reside in Bangalore and once you log your service call at the 39883333 number, it goes to a Help Desk. The only job of these guys is to route your call to a Franchise who may attend the service at his leisure. There is a total disconnect between the Help Desk and the Franchisee Service Center.
I had lodged a complaint(#0054977201) on 05-Aug-09 of a leaking problem and also to do the annual filter replacement(overdue by a month or so. As per the AMC , Eureko Forbes technicians should automatically come to your place at the appropriate time ). Clearly the leakage was due to the old inlet pipe which keeps on breaking. Despite repeated requests to Eureka Forbes and technicians, to replace the inlet pipe itself, all they did was to cut the broken section of the pipe and fit the remaining pipe itself.
Due to this the pipe breaks again and they started leaking again. This repeated twice in a matter of 4 days and by 14Aug09, I was promised a replacement pipe in 2 days. Sadly repeated calls to the call center or the franchise or the Eureka Forbes Customer Relationship Manager at 080-30251602/1600 did not help at all.
Forst the past 7 days, I had called these people umpteen times, but no one knows, who has to procure the inlet pipe for me. A call today morning to the helpdesk conveyed that the replacement will be done by 4pm and I was given the contact number of the franchisee. On calling up the franchisee , he said that he had no information on the same and asked me to contact back Eureka Forbes for the spare. On calling up the Bangalore Customer Relationship Manager , she passed the buck back to the franchisee. Now I have no clue on who to contact. ! Its been 17 days and some 40 different phone calls on a daily basis and I am yet to see an affirmative reply from Eureka Forbes.
This is the kind of service Eureka Forbes provides to a customer who is on an AMC (Rs.700+ a yr).. Also watch out for cheating by the technicians who come to service. A little more than a year back, my ultraviolet (UV) lamp conked off and the technician demanded some Rs.400 or so for the replacement, citing that it is not covered under AMC/Warranty. He even made a call to his Manage, who confirmed to me that UV lamps are not covered. On a quick glance at the back of the AMC document, it was clearly mentioned that "UV Lamps are Indeed covered in AMC !" I clearly read that out to him as well as his manager and after 2 days of dilly dallying, the lamp was replaced free of cost. So watch out if you have only elders at home, who have no clue about the AMC and may pay up unknowingly.
For the past 3 years, I never had a smooth service apart from the initial 1 yr post installation. Either a wrong technician came or it was assigned to a wrong franchisee and it always took multiple calls to have a technician come home and service it. Clearly it is a gross mismanagement between the widely publicized Helpdesk, the franchisees and the Eureka Forbes Management MORALE: Do not buy Eureka Forbes or go for AMC. You will definitely lose peace of mind !!