I am back in MS writing a review after a real long time!! Managed to get some time off work to do this. Hope you all are doing fine. I was reading some reviews about IMINT here and just thought of sharing my experience and opinion too. First of all, let us not be hasty in branding IMINT as good or bad. I personally feel it is too early for us to do that - maybe it’s because of my experience below. Please check out.
The first time I heard of IMINT dates back to 2007 when suddenly I noticed all my ICICI credit card points disappeared. When I called up the customer care of ICICI, they informed me about this service called IMINT. In the first place, I was very upset thinking who gave them the consent to shift all my points without my knowledge out of my ICICI card. This same mindset and irritation got shifted to IMINT when I was given IMINT customer care number by ICICI and asked to speak to IMINT for anything related to points in future. The first day I made calls to IMINT - 5 attempts, nobody picking calls.
This was enough for me to get further irritated. Then, after 3-4 days, I got a lady on their line and she informed me that I should try calling them before 5:00 p.m. IST as they did not have service after that (I was trying to talk to them daily after 5:00 p.m., after my office hours). Nevetheless, I expressed to her all the displeasure I had in being forced into this thing called IMINT without my consent. However, she tried to politely make me understand and requested me to try them out for some time.
After around 2 months, I got a message from them saying I had a lot of points (nearly 20, 000 points) and that I could redeem anything from them. Excited about the first redemption, we (I and my wife) sat and ran through their rewards category for three full days:-) and finally after a lot of discussion on whether to go for expensive items or not, we decided to order some minor items first to check out the quality of the stuff that they would send. As we had it in our fear, the products sent were not as impressive as we buy from shops ourselves. Looks like the dealers with whom IMINT has tied up for these products know for very sure that these are delivered to customers who are never going to drop into their shops any day in future. Eventually, we not only stopped redeeming points for such items but also developed a feeling that IMINT is a kind of fraud company.
Further, after a couple of months, based on our friends’ recommendation, we decided to redeem for vouchers instead of goods (as we usually shop/watch movies quite often). Then, we realized vouchers make more sense as we get the value of it and we can buy stuff ourselves from wherever we want. This gave us no reason to be upset about the quality of the products sent to us by someone whom we did not know. Twice, we redeemed for bookmyshow vouchers, and they sent us voucher numbers through an SMS without any details like denomination of each voucher, expiry date, and/or any other terms and conditions. I called up the customer care to ask which voucher carries what value and can the amount be carried over after its first use, etc. and suggested them to send vouchers with details like denomination, expiry date, and other terms and conditions, if any, so that we didn’t have to get back to them with questions.
Surprisingly, the next time I redeemed, it was pleasing to see all my suggestions implemented - I got an e-mail with all the required details and this time vouchers sent on time as well, along with the SMS as usual. A couple of my other friends too confirmed that they are getting vouchers with all essential details in mail, and they were also happy that they didn’t have to call them back with questions.
So, I feel these guys are there really for business. They are aware that they can’t fool around with their customers, as the business they have ventured into is purely based on customers. They are listening, accepting, and incorporating our inputs. Let’s give them the time and space to establish in market and then decide whether they are good enough or bad. I am quite confident they will be able to provide services in India as any other international rewards company would in their countries over a period of time.
Thats it from me for now. Thank you all and have a great time!!