Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Monday, November 26, 2007

The Golden Temple - Harmandir Sahib



Something about this place absolutely mesmerizes me. There is a calmness that overwhelms me each time I go there.
I am only comfortably religious and have been lucky to visit some of the other awe-inspiring temples in the country but the kind of effect this place has on me is spellbinding.

We visited Darbar Sahib on our annual Diwali trips to Kapurthala and came back a little more peaceful. Hoping to do it each year.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Horror called Hutch

I have a Hutch corporate connection which I have been using for past 9 months now.

Trouble was initiated when I started getting all kinds of unsolicited calls from Hutch for either caller tunes or ring tones or special offers or some other kind of promotion that I am least interested in.
Strangely the call would always come from a 10 digit number which I would pick assuming it was from an acquaintance and immediately I would hear an automated voice urging me to buy something or the other.
A minimum of 3 calls a day on good days. And if you disconnect they’ll call again and again. Talk about relentless customer reach. Add to this a million SMSs and a billion screen flashes.

Finally when I had had enough of it I called the Hutch Customer Care number. After holding for 16 minutes the call got disconnected without me getting a chance to speak to a human voice. I did try again and finally after getting disconnected a couple of times and having held the phone for some 20-25 minutes I did get a live person to listen to my woes.

After the usual “thanks for your patience” and “we understand” the customer care lady informed me that it will take a minimum of 45 days for my number to get listed as a “do not call”. Unbelievable but true and she said there wasn’t another option.
Fine, another 45 days. This was on 1st of September.
The calls continued at an even faster rate. It appeared to me that they were planning to bombard me with as many calls before delisting my number.
And these continued even after 45 days of waiting.
Finally I called them again on Nov 1st when I was traveling and my phone was on roaming only to be told that since I was in a different circle they couldn’t help me.

When I returned to Bangalore I called them again on 13th November and this time the customer care guy told me that it will take another 21 days. After explaining him the torture I was going through he said he would get back to me in an hours time.

Not to anyone’s surprise I didn’t hear from them. I called back again last Saturday (17th November) and the customer care lady told me that she will ensure that these calls will stop in 24 hours.
Obviously that didn’t happen. I called again today to be told it will take another 45 days.
Clearly HUTCH doesn’t understand my woes and I have taken it up on myself to fight them out. I have given myself 7 days to get rid of this menace.

Any ideas to help me in my battle??
Updated on 25th November – couple of updates. Did call them again on Friday. And spoke to yet another irritating hardly educated customer service executive. The same blah blah and a little more. Convinced her that my problem was almost suicidal and finally got a call back from her manager N. Another round of explanations and some education on how important a customer is and how fatal an upset customer can get, N promised to resolve this in 2 working days.
I will give her another chance.

And did I mention that I was woken up today morning with a call asking me to make “Om Jai Jagdish Hare” my ring tone!!!!!

Updated on 5th Dec – I was traveling and that’s why couldn’t update this earlier but the good news is that I am over the nuisance of these unwanted calls. Haven’t received any for the past week. The customer care manager N called me and apologized again.
Looks like my trouble with Hutch is getting over. Finally!!!!!