All that glitters is not gold, this saying definitely is true for DTDC Courier services. They advertise themselves as professional, efficient, trustworthy blah blah blah.
Delve a little deeper and the real picture emerges. An acquaintance of mine wanted to courier some silk sarees, medicines, BP measuring equipment, footwear and some artificial jewelry as diwali gifts to her family who reside in a different city.
She packed them well and went to DTDC Vimanagar branch and gave the courier. She was charged a hefty sum of Rs. 750/- as courier charges. She did not in the least mind paying as they were gifts and she wanted to surprise her family.
Poor thing did not know of the nightmare that was ahead. A week passed by and she called her family and checked if they received their gifts. She was surprised to hear, they did not receive any courier. She then promptly logged online to track the consignment. The online tracking showed the consignment left Pune and reached halfway. She called the DTDC office, they apologized and said that their offices in the other cities were closed due to Diwali and have now reopened and her courier will be delivered the next day.
A whole month passed, with my acquaintance chasing DTDC for an update and the response which initially was polite soon turned rude and then ugly. The lady at the other end got abusive and asked my acquaintance why she is chasing them everyday. Now this was a classic case of "Ulta Chor Kotwal ko Daatein"
One they showed deficiency in services and when it came to customer care, instead of caring, they started abusing. We then intervened to resolve the issue and visited the office. The lady at the counter flatly refused to have received any call from my acquaintance. She got abusive and turned violent, so much so that her colleagues had to restrain her.
Her behavior left us with no doubt that she did not want us to chase this further as very glaringly the culprit was right in front of us. She probably after seeing the declaration, did some mischief. The branch Manager intervened and assured he will look into it and revert back with an update.
The nightmare did not end yet. We continued chasing the branch manager who most of the time wasn’t available. We finally managed to catch hold of him, by then even we ran out of patience and demanded to return back our parcel or compensate. The BM had the cheek to tell us that the company doesn’t have a compensation policy. We had to threaten him of police complaint and going to consumer courts to get him to do something. Finally after two very long months, my acquaintance got 50% of the compensation that two were given by two Post Dated Checks.
Now whenever I see anyone selling themselves as trustworthy, I know they aren’t to be trusted.