My experiences with the grievance redressal mechanisms of various services and service providers over the years has quite often left me with a bad taste in the mouth.
So when I was faced with the choice of a DTH service provider last year, I thought there is perhaps little to choose between Dish TV and Tata Sky. After a brief weighing of the scales, I saw my preference tilting more towards the latter, mainly because I thought their prefix curried more reliability and credibility than that of the Goyals, who didn’t come across as anything more than brazen moneymakers to me. The Tata brand only held out a promise, based more on name than on anything else – one which I thought would take only a day more to belie than that of Dish TV.
So, with a nagging feeling clawing at the back of my mind I waited for the first problem to crop up. That it did sooner than I anticipated. A cluster of channels one fine day started appearing pixelated. I called up with their customer service and was told that it would not take more than 48 hours for them to send a techie who would fix things up. I grumbled and swore under my breath – in 48 hours the TV firmament changes. The problem, in fact, was taken care of by sundown. Twice more similar kinds of problems surfaced. Each time I was told it would take so many hours for them to rectify things, each time the needful was done before their own set deadline. While on one hand I was a tad chagrined that it was taking so much time, but each time I realised that I hadn’t been doled out empty promises and that issues were resolved in a matter of hours. And of course, each time the techie would call up to ascertain whether I would be at home.
Shifting residences always has me in a state of discomfiture. Change of address here, change of address there, transfer this, transfer that. Gets my goat every time. So when it was time for me to shift from Noida to Dwarka in West Delhi, I wondered how long it would take, among other things, for Tata Sky to do the requisite. I was told it would take not more than three days – the job was executed in less than two. I felt relieved. Phew!
Till this point Tatasky had not left any imprint, so to speak, on me. They hadn’t done anything yet which they were not expected to do, they hadn’t done anything exemplary. I was yet to see anything which would set them apart from any other service provider.
For someone who spends the better part of his day on the Internet, I prefer the convenience of online transactions. There were two in recent times which involved Tata Sky. One was, obviously, the last payment. The screen hadn’t even refreshed fully before my cell beeped with an acknowledgment from Tatasky. Cool, I said to myself. I contrasted this with the Vodafone bill payment through my mobile I made around the same time. It took them almost a couple of hours to even acknowledge the payment, and close to a day to confirm receipt. I am not an expert in convergence technologies. Will someone tell me if Internet transactions are that faster than mobile payments?
The other occasion w.r.t Tata Sky had to do with a change in the package of channels I was subscribing to. This time again I fancied doing it online. I upgraded my package to one which included all the new pay channels. I clicked on ‘submit’ and sauntered into the living room. Let’s see if it was worked, I announced smugly. “Be patient, it takes time for such changes to come into effect,” I was told. The epitome of impatience that I am, I snatched the remote and started furiously switching channels. I didn’t have to zip through too many because the very second told me that the package stood upgraded – the new set of channels were already there for me to view. Wow, I said this time. I had an ear-to-ear grin and stopped short of breaking in a jhingalala jig. I like to see things working as they should; things couldn’t get better.
I contrasted this experience with one that again involved Vodafone. Sometime in early May, I desperately needed a copy of my post-paid mobile bill. I wasn’t at home, and wasn’t carrying a copy. I called up their customer care division imploring them to email me a copy of the last bill ASAP. I badly needed to take a printout. Oh, it would take a few hours, I was told. Drats, in a few hours I would be back home and in no need for a duplicate bill. That bill, till this day, hasn’t landed in my mailbox. So much for customer care and efficient systems. (I have something on Vodafone in another post.)
The goof-up my DTH provider made recently over the sports channels is a take that doesn’t fit into the scheme of this post. For the moment, Tata Sky has in me an end-customer who is satisfied and impressed too. Yeah, some people can be santusht, all for good reasons. Whether the Tata Sky folks can sustain themselves in their services and efficient technologies is something I cannot predict. For my sake, I hope they do.
