" Everything feels OK as long as it is not happening to you"
The moment I felt helpless and needed to pour my heart out about how ill treated we were at Hometown, I turned to the web. I somewhere had a hope that maybe I will find a good contact person who shall respond to me and help me to be able to forgive the store for the pathetic service they have to offer. After just a 10 mins search and finding myself amidst so many consumer complaints that just lay without being responded to, I begin to think that this is not a one time mishap, It lies in their rulebook. Maybe when the employee orientation happens they are told " Forgot all that you know about customer service and stick to the company beliefs. The company beliefs being that there is no dearth of fools( customers) around here. If one fool is shouting his lungs out just let him get it out. You don’t have to really do anything about it. Do whatever suits you. Never ever even think for one second that the person on the other end is just as human as you. The term customer needs has no place in our vocab. Only be worried about getting the fool to pay up and the rest of the story doesn’t matter."
If that is truely the attitude that Hometown wishes to keep for life, then so be it. I am not going to ask you to change. Fate shall soon catch up with you. Good luck with that.
What is it that I really feel so let down about?
During the time of payment, we made it clear that we needs the product as soon as possible. The sales guy said we will surely try to cut down the delivery time from 15 days to 10 days. Agreed that the max was 15 days and so inspite of the false hope of an earlier delivery we were mentally prepared for 15 days.
Till the morning of the 15th day we did not receive any form of communication from them. Too much to expect from them I guess. Anyways I called them on the 15th day to confirm the deliver just to discover that some delivery order had not been raised for us. After a lot of calling and talking I got them to deliver the goods.
When the goods were brought to my doorstep I thought I could feel better now. To my dismay, I discovered that when they say delivery they mean dumping the unassembled parts wrapped in boxes. Really? Is that how it is done? So if Hometown ever to be a pizza point and I order a delivery they shall send the dough, fillings and oven first and the chef sometime later… Wow that has to be a great business plan. So I was informed that the fitting will be done within 24 hrs of delivery.
So after this discovery when I tried calling and convince them to do the fitting the same day, the rude guy wasn’t listening at all. I took him supervisor’s no. and tried calling him. After giving him a piece of my mind, he said he shall call back. As guessed no calling back. So after a while I tried to cool down and called him back. He then promised that the fitting guy will be at my place by 12 the next afternoon for sure.
1 in the afternoon the next day, no one turned up. So I called the supervisor( Swapin) 3 times with no one picking up. And guess what was next. He turned his mobile off. Ok this is the most hurtful way to treat a customer. Great work!
After calling the customer service no. and staying on hold for a seemingly endless time, some lady gave me the fitting guy’s no. Called him and he said he will come by 4 to do the task. I am still waiting for it to happen though.
7.Meanwhile there is also confusion when some other guy calls me from the service centre saying the fitting will be done the next day. When I asked him about the within 24 hrs fitting things, he said it was 48 hrs. So convenient it isn’t it?
Way to go HomeTown