Have you ever called customer care to make a complaint or have an issue resolved? I’m sure everyone has. Sometimes these calls take hours because we’re constantly put on hold and made to wait. At other times, just one call is insufficient. So we call again. And end up explaining the whole situation to a different executive this time around. E-mails and social media mentions get automated responses but no follow-up. The entire experience is quite frustrating.
So what does one do to get the company in question to sit up and take notice? Well, this man got a little creative.
Manu Aggarwal lives in Rohtak, Haryana. His wife gifted him a Google Pixel phone on his birthday. When his phone started having some issues, he gave it to the company’s service centre. He claims that even though the device was under warranty, he was charged INR 26,851 for repairs. And after the phone arrived, it started showing ‘Phone turned off due to heat’ message. Allegedly, the service centre caused liquid damage because of which the phone didn’t work. He tried to escalate the matter through e-mails and calls to customer support but no resolution was reached for over 3 months.
On 31 December 2017, Manu protested against the company and their ineffective customer support at India Gate and Connaught Place in New Delhi. He even had posters and banners made!
The QR code on the posters links back to his tweets. He has also tagged Google CEO Sundar Pichai and PMO India in some of the complaints. Even though his case is not recent, many people are now sharing his story dubbing it a ‘sole crusade’.
His tweets from March to May 2018 have call logs, e-mail screenshots and also his case number
https://twitter.com/ManuAggarwall/status/973258237326786561
The company’s automated response
That's not the experience we want you to have, Manu. Let's take this to DM to look into this further. Please click on the link below to send us a direct message. https://t.co/YEgOInR4f9
— Made by Google (@madebygoogle) March 13, 2018
After months of unsuccessful protests, on 12 June 2018, he wrote
“222 Days of Mental Harassment is beyond imagination for Google lovers.”
His case has still NOT been resolved. This is his most recent tweet.
https://twitter.com/ManuAggarwall/status/1078329694313836544
This is the public awareness video he made to share his story
Here’s hoping that companies realise after-sale service for their products must be quick and efficient. And no one else has to suffer what this man did.
But kudos to Manu Aggarwal for his creative effort of grabbing Google’s attention. Because ghee seedhi ungli se na nikle, to ungli tedi karni padti hai!