Kishore Singh: Customer care

PEOPLE LIKE US

Unable to put up with my son's nagging any more, I relented and consigned the old family computer to the garage, and agreed to a top-of-the-line PC that does everything but fly.

And that should have been pretty much that, only it seemed we still needed more memory, more chips, more cards, more everything till I felt powered enough to take on the US army any time it was through with Iraq.

It was only weeks before the keyboard became the first victim. Since it was covered under warranty, it was replaced; then replaced again, and still again, all in a matter of a few days.

The next to go was the fancy scanner-printer-copier that just gave up its natural functions and went comatose. "Bring it to the factory," the toll-free number informed us when we called to complain. "Tell them we have a three-year warranty," my son hissed from the background.

"We have a three-year warranty," I echoed to the customer care executive. "And pretty good too," the executive congratulated me, "but you'll still have to bring it to the factory." "It's an on-site warranty," my wife yelled from the background.

"You heard the lady," I said into the phone. "No, you don't," argued the executive. "Yes, I do," I insisted. Identity numbers, support document numbers and serial numbers were read out once again, but it all added up to nix. "Bring it here," the executive said. "No, I won't," I fought back.

I asked for the telephone humber of a supervisor, and was directed to call Bangalore. I insisted on calling someone in Delhi. There was no way out of the impasse but to bang the phone down heavily.

"This," I said with feeling, "is why people migrate to America." "Probably to have their complaints routed back to some call centre in India," laughed my wife. "Is that right?" said my son, "that's so cool." "What is?" I asked.

"That the same person you were shouting at might be attending to complaints from America," he said. "This time," he added, "I'll complain the way it's done internationally."

And, putting on the fakest American accent I've ever heard, he called the customer helpline to say, "Hey dude, mind if you can get someone's ass down to look into my copier?"

For his troubles, though, he couldn't move the helpline any more than I could, but was asked by his mother to rinse out his mouth with soap on account of his language.

For a month, we continued to complain sporadically, sometimes beseeching, sometimes demanding, even on occasion downright rude, but the copier remained unattended. Finally, angry at the lack of service, I drove off to the vendor from whom we had bought our system, to give him an earful.

Having heard me through, the manager smiled and said, "But they're right, you have to take the machine to the workshop for repairs." But what about my on-site warranty?" I asked. "That's for your computer," he pointed out, "not for the copier; they don't have one for the copier."

We now had a choice. We could call the customer helpline and beg forgiveness, or ask the vendor to send someone to look at the machine for whatever it might cost us.

We decided on the latter, but alas, the fault was in the machine, and the engineer shrugged helplessness: we would have to go back to the company for repairs.

Meanwhile, a few more days have passed. And once again we have a choice. Either eat humble pie, own up and ask for the forgiveness of the executives whom we so often impolitely ticked off, or put it behind us and spend on a new copier. It isn't an easy decision, and we're still mulling over the choices.