Cool G5
Conversation Architect
I was required to visit Nokia Care as my friend’s N73 had developed a joystick problem along with the famous “Low memory” error. As I was going to Nokia care with my friend, I decided to give my Nokia 5700 to Nokia care to upgrade its firmware. I could have done it on my own at home, but preferred to give it to Nokia care as I don’t have a good internet connection at my disposal.
We went directly to the main Nokia Care located at Lower Parel (Big Bazaar) instead of the local Care centre’s which anyway ships the phones to the main centre. We reached the Nokia care at around 2 PM & in spite of being a working day, it was quite crowded with some angry customers. I noticed that N73 is the worst phone hit – I saw a number of people who had some problem with their N73.
After taking the ticket & making entry into the register, I had to wait for around 20 minutes in a queue. The reason behind this long wait was most of the attendants were gone to have their lunch. Out of 10 attendants only 4 were found to be on their places. I saw a notice regarding Lunch timings, it read – 1:00 to 1:30 PM. In spite of being 2:30 in the clock, these guys were nowhere to be seen.
Now comes the hilarious part – I went to the counter as my turn arrived, after settling down in the chair, I went ahead telling my problem to the lady in front of me. She was quite young, but one could make out easily she was in a bad mood. After hearing the word “Firmware Upgrade” from my mouth, she was quite baffled. She turned around and asked the service guys about the same & then she replied “Sir that’s not “Firmware Upgrade”, it’s known as “Software Upgrade”. I replied back saying “Yes, I meant the same” (WTH does it matter, saying Firmware or Software? Technically I am correct) After that, you are asked to wait as the technical team determines whether the phone has any liquid or technical damage in which case your warranty is nullified.
Then my phone was forwarded to the guy from technical team. I was lucky to get a good guy, who opened the phone with great care but my friend’s phone got in the hands of a reckless guy. This guy pounced on the N73 like a hungry tiger on its prey. The guy opened the phone in such a manner that one could easily say he was raping it. He thrusted a pointed metallic needle like instrument in the small crevices of the phone & started taking it apart. The guys even do not place anything soft on the table so as to prevent the scratches to the screen & other delicate components, so careless attitude. Even the phones are banged into a box one above another when a customer deposits it for repairs. It hurts when you see your valuable phone being abused in an air-conditioned environment. These guys do not discriminate between low end & high end models, all phones meet the same fate once they reach in the hands of these guys. As I was peering at the guy (who carefully opened my 5700 earlier), he almost dropped the main board of the phone from his hand while putting the components back in place. To add to this, he even seemed to be confused as to how to put the body cover back into it’s original position. Earlier I had some faith that at least there is a guy who does his work with utmost care, but this sight made me think again. Now what can you call them? Can these guys be termed as “Technically Qualified”? I don’t think so.
After he was satisfied with the phone’s condition, he passed the statement to the lady who in turn told me to sign on the job sheet and check the status of the device after a couple of days. This isn’t my first visit to Nokia Care, earlier too I had visited it to solve the problem of a corrupt memory card. Every time I had been there the experience is not quite a good one. Last time, I got to saw an angry customer, who had came to the Nokia care for the third time & still was seen with a faulty phone in his hand. He stood in front of people & spoke in a staunch voice about how his life had become a menace due to these b*^%^$#@. Even his wish to replace the phone wasn’t given any heed from the top level guys. Hearing his painful plight, all people charged up & got into an argument with the attendant. Some people from back rows even started to yell abuses on the management. Then there were those usual comments, which are bound to be heard of – “Never ever I will buy a Nokia mobile”. The matter was about to get ugly, but was saved as a senior officer intervened and agreed to look into his problem personally. I hope the poor guy may have got his phone in a good state or at least a replacement.
Another incident, which crushed my faith in these customer cares, was from the popular cellular service provider – Airtel. Once (2 years ago) I went to Airtel customer care a.k.a relationship centre(As Airtel prefers to call them) to check whether they provide EDGE service in Mumbai. I asked the guy who was attending me & his reaction was such which would bring a huge laugh and produce an equally huge desire to bash him. He replied “What E…. D…?” Sir what you want?” I again repeated my statement. Then he asked me to wait for a while & went away. After a few moments, he returned with another guy, to whom once again I had to explain what I needed to know. Finally that guy replied “We do not have EDGE services in Mumbai, but we will be starting them shortly”. After such a response, I was tempted to ask him about 3G services. Now you can easily predict what must have happened – I got the same response again, “Sir we will be starting 3G soon”. And for the matter of fact Airtel does provide EDGE service in Mumbai. I got to know about this when I switched to a new phone, which displayed an “E” indicating the presence of EDGE network. This tells us how efficiently this customer cares function. I have a far more incidents to share, but it’s useless to speak about the same thing over and over again.
Let the customer care be of Nokia or Sony Ericsson, Airtel or Vodaphone all have a huge history of being extremely unhelpful & adding to the customer’s frustration. Having 24*7*365 days support is just a marketing gimmick and nothing else. Now I will have to again run to Nokia care to collect my mobile, hope I get it back in time in the same condition as I had deposited it. Due to such incidents, now I have totally lost trust in the loudly trumpeted customer support, be it of handset manufacturer or service provider. All these people are just a bunch of ill-trained, ill-informed and to a large extent lazy people. It is better to keep ourselves updated by the means of this huge internet or any other means and sort the problems out on our own. This way we will save a lot of time, money and most preciously our mental cool.
We went directly to the main Nokia Care located at Lower Parel (Big Bazaar) instead of the local Care centre’s which anyway ships the phones to the main centre. We reached the Nokia care at around 2 PM & in spite of being a working day, it was quite crowded with some angry customers. I noticed that N73 is the worst phone hit – I saw a number of people who had some problem with their N73.
After taking the ticket & making entry into the register, I had to wait for around 20 minutes in a queue. The reason behind this long wait was most of the attendants were gone to have their lunch. Out of 10 attendants only 4 were found to be on their places. I saw a notice regarding Lunch timings, it read – 1:00 to 1:30 PM. In spite of being 2:30 in the clock, these guys were nowhere to be seen.
Now comes the hilarious part – I went to the counter as my turn arrived, after settling down in the chair, I went ahead telling my problem to the lady in front of me. She was quite young, but one could make out easily she was in a bad mood. After hearing the word “Firmware Upgrade” from my mouth, she was quite baffled. She turned around and asked the service guys about the same & then she replied “Sir that’s not “Firmware Upgrade”, it’s known as “Software Upgrade”. I replied back saying “Yes, I meant the same” (WTH does it matter, saying Firmware or Software? Technically I am correct) After that, you are asked to wait as the technical team determines whether the phone has any liquid or technical damage in which case your warranty is nullified.
Then my phone was forwarded to the guy from technical team. I was lucky to get a good guy, who opened the phone with great care but my friend’s phone got in the hands of a reckless guy. This guy pounced on the N73 like a hungry tiger on its prey. The guy opened the phone in such a manner that one could easily say he was raping it. He thrusted a pointed metallic needle like instrument in the small crevices of the phone & started taking it apart. The guys even do not place anything soft on the table so as to prevent the scratches to the screen & other delicate components, so careless attitude. Even the phones are banged into a box one above another when a customer deposits it for repairs. It hurts when you see your valuable phone being abused in an air-conditioned environment. These guys do not discriminate between low end & high end models, all phones meet the same fate once they reach in the hands of these guys. As I was peering at the guy (who carefully opened my 5700 earlier), he almost dropped the main board of the phone from his hand while putting the components back in place. To add to this, he even seemed to be confused as to how to put the body cover back into it’s original position. Earlier I had some faith that at least there is a guy who does his work with utmost care, but this sight made me think again. Now what can you call them? Can these guys be termed as “Technically Qualified”? I don’t think so.
After he was satisfied with the phone’s condition, he passed the statement to the lady who in turn told me to sign on the job sheet and check the status of the device after a couple of days. This isn’t my first visit to Nokia Care, earlier too I had visited it to solve the problem of a corrupt memory card. Every time I had been there the experience is not quite a good one. Last time, I got to saw an angry customer, who had came to the Nokia care for the third time & still was seen with a faulty phone in his hand. He stood in front of people & spoke in a staunch voice about how his life had become a menace due to these b*^%^$#@. Even his wish to replace the phone wasn’t given any heed from the top level guys. Hearing his painful plight, all people charged up & got into an argument with the attendant. Some people from back rows even started to yell abuses on the management. Then there were those usual comments, which are bound to be heard of – “Never ever I will buy a Nokia mobile”. The matter was about to get ugly, but was saved as a senior officer intervened and agreed to look into his problem personally. I hope the poor guy may have got his phone in a good state or at least a replacement.
Another incident, which crushed my faith in these customer cares, was from the popular cellular service provider – Airtel. Once (2 years ago) I went to Airtel customer care a.k.a relationship centre(As Airtel prefers to call them) to check whether they provide EDGE service in Mumbai. I asked the guy who was attending me & his reaction was such which would bring a huge laugh and produce an equally huge desire to bash him. He replied “What E…. D…?” Sir what you want?” I again repeated my statement. Then he asked me to wait for a while & went away. After a few moments, he returned with another guy, to whom once again I had to explain what I needed to know. Finally that guy replied “We do not have EDGE services in Mumbai, but we will be starting them shortly”. After such a response, I was tempted to ask him about 3G services. Now you can easily predict what must have happened – I got the same response again, “Sir we will be starting 3G soon”. And for the matter of fact Airtel does provide EDGE service in Mumbai. I got to know about this when I switched to a new phone, which displayed an “E” indicating the presence of EDGE network. This tells us how efficiently this customer cares function. I have a far more incidents to share, but it’s useless to speak about the same thing over and over again.
Let the customer care be of Nokia or Sony Ericsson, Airtel or Vodaphone all have a huge history of being extremely unhelpful & adding to the customer’s frustration. Having 24*7*365 days support is just a marketing gimmick and nothing else. Now I will have to again run to Nokia care to collect my mobile, hope I get it back in time in the same condition as I had deposited it. Due to such incidents, now I have totally lost trust in the loudly trumpeted customer support, be it of handset manufacturer or service provider. All these people are just a bunch of ill-trained, ill-informed and to a large extent lazy people. It is better to keep ourselves updated by the means of this huge internet or any other means and sort the problems out on our own. This way we will save a lot of time, money and most preciously our mental cool.
