Am not sure if I am being a hyper critic here as it has been my only visit/experience at croma, to date.
My visit was to croma, Jayanagar ( opp Big Bazaar on the main road ) was to buy an E5 on 24 Oct 2010. A sales lady opened a box piece, put my sim card in and started showing me the features after I had made a payment to buy it. While giving me a demo, we figured that the memory card on the phone ( 2 GB ) was not getting detected. The lady informed me that she will try using a different memory card to see if it works. However, I insisted on a new box piece as after paying close to 11K, I thought a customer deserved a phone that works well on a first pass. Reluctantly the lady gave me a new piece ( after a bit of persuasion and plain talk! ). I was happy with the new phone and took it home, without realizing that the lady had copied my data from sim onto the phone, that was found faulty and rejected by me at the first instance.
After about 5 days, I get a call from an unknown number, requesting me to let him know, if I had sold my E5 recently to anyone. After I answered him in the negative and telling him that I bought a new one a week ago, I sensed what might have gone on and asked him why was he asking me that question. He explained it to me that he bought a new phone, the previous day and that it had a few messages in it. The poor chap ( probably shocked too! ) had tried calling the numbers from where the messages had come in and had found out my cell phone number, in turn. I immediately asked him if he had bought it from Croma and his response confirmed my suspicion. The buggers at Croma had sold him the same phone that I had rejected, without even checking if it had any content in it! The guy then got a replacement phone and all I received was an oral apology.
I did not expect this from a Tata firm! They had two options:
(1) As soon as I had rejected the phone, they should have checked if the memory card was at fault or the phone’s software to read content from it and should have rectified it.(2) Once they had reached a conclusion on (1), should have sent the piece back to Nokia or if it worked, should have erased the content from the phone, if any before reselling it.
None of the above two were done, apparently, in this case. The poor chap who had bought this phone got to know that the memory card on that phone had a problem, only after I explained it to him on my visit!!! This is a blatant case of fraud, on the part of croma, to have sold a handset knowing fully well that it was faulty!
Now that the piece was sold with my content in it, what if I had any sensitive information in one of those messages and what was the guarantee that someone could not have misused it!
Though it could just be a one off instance, it has dented my confidence and trust in Croma, A Tata Enterprise.. and I may not visit them again ever! forget about recommending it to others.
I have filed a complaint on their official website too and am interested in knowing what they’ll come back with!