3rd june morning when I woke up in trivandrum I was so enthralled with the utility of cell phones that I marvelled at what man has created. later on when I recharged to "top-up" my balance, the retailer changed a digit in the number 9922050925 and made it 9922060925 and blamed my handwriting.
Then I was in a world of poop. the retailer tried the local customer care on 88009 and they informed that it cant be helped. I was at a loss of INR 600 and then I came back to my place and got a friend to help on this. he too was given another local customer helpdesk number 58009, I went back to the retailer to get him to call it. to our surprise, it was the business helpline for only the retailers of kerala, and they gave another helpline number for maharashtra 9822012345. I made a mistake at this point not collecting the retail merchants contact number and went back to my hotel room.
I kept calling the customer help line with the appropriate options specified but that kept saying all customer assisting fellows were busy. with a wee bit of variation in the options I was dialing, I got assistance for an option that was actually not related to the issue. anyway, I told them the problem and they told me that I need to get the retailer to call at another number 4488. again I went to the retailer with this number and found that this number works only when called from maharashtra and goa circle.
I took the retailers number and went back to my hotel room all the way trying to reach the people who gave me the number that doesnt work, then I cried and pleaded with them for 15 minutes and they gave me another number 9847112345 and no resolution. then I gave that number to the retailer who wouldnt call because he was busy with other customers wherein I had cared enough to not allow a loss for him. anyway, he said he will call and let me know. well he did not call me for quite sometime and when I tried following up he said, they werent picking up the phone. I asked when he was planning to tell me that, he said he was busy with customers. anyway, I called the kerala circle retail helpline. after 15 min of explaining pleading and crying the english I heard made me cry even more, thinking about to whom I had been explaining. I had asked for conversation in english and this is what I get.
Anyway, the only sense I could make out of the conversation, if you could call it any, was the word supervisor. and then I called the retail from another phone asking him to call in parallel and talk to the people of the so called helpline in malyalam and get them to do the needful. meanwhile I was holding and the call got disconnected on its own. this happened thrice and at the third time they wanted me to call the number I had called first. i.e 58009. Finally I called the pune number and they told me they cant do it it has to be the 58009 number. I missed my lunch and my office people wanted me back on duty. 8 miles running up and down my office where the retail shop is located and the 5 hours of holding. 150 bucks of auto fare. Anyway, the next day after I contacted a few people on orkut, some female from that pune customer care called and informed me that it has been recredited to my account. the tone was horrid as if she was pissed off at me, should have been the other way round.