I always stand up for what I believe in and what is right even if it means standing alone...In life standing up for your rights is never easy but it is very important to embark on this Long and difficult path to enforce and protect your individual and consumer rights.We all must be aware of our rights.In exercising our rights are we truly free individuals.

I have won many long customer battles against Banks,Phone Companies, Airlines, Electronics Companies etc. I have devoted time and energy to demand positive resolutions for myself and people around me. I hate it when one is denied what every customer has a right to...and that is when I find it important to address it and complain about it. I know it takes time to escalate matters but somehow I prefer to address it no matter what. Having lived in America for sometime, I give a lot of importance to Individual Rights.

It is my nephew who inspired me to write this blog. He felt the importance of his rights and the need to address this subject in a blog very early in age when he was unhappy with the services of a certain Airline. It was then that he suggested that I should write a blog concerning such matters too.

Everyone has certain rights but we are usually not informed about them or do not exercise them. We have a right to be heard...and we must never forget that. There is One Right for All and None should be discriminated. One has the right to question and a right to information. With growing middle class touch 400 million and consumerism, Indian Companies need to become responsive to Consumer complaints and grievances. Ignoring such complaints could lead to big financial losses for the company on consumer complaints being upheld by Consumer Courts.

In this blog, I would like us to share our knowledge about how best to address our complaints effectively as a customer or consumer. It is also important to inform people about the poor customer services provided by reputed brand names. But I would also like to hi-light the names of companies and brands who have co-operated with customers and given positive responses. Please do share your experiences too.

You do not win every battle in life but you learn lessons from it and hopefully live to win it some day. Through this blog ,I would like to inspire people to stand up for their rights and if needed fight for it but the fight for your rights has to be fair and honest. I aim to create a direction and awareness for people who are not given their due rights as an individual first and then as a consumer. There are always solutions and there are way to reach those solutions or alternatives as customers through proper channels.

Whenever you have been able to get your rights heard, you should generously share that knowledge as how best to achieve that so that others could follow that too. Pay it forward ! We should share knowledge and in doing so we will learn more from each other. Alone you can stand up for your rights but with people behind you and with you , there will be more force in it and consumers and customers will not be taken for granted. United we stand in getting value for our hard earned money...United we stand in ensuring we get good customer service.

When there is a will there is a way. When you stand up for your rights and for others , somebody will listen to you sooner or later. Your voice will be heard ! But for that you have to speak out ! Silence can sometimes be mistaken as weakness or indifference. Always know your rights and request for those rights to be implemented but if they are not then demand that justice be served.


Always stand up for your rights...

Consumer Rights Consumer Might !

" Sadaa Haq Aithe Rakh ! "

"Manzil mushkil to Kya... Humhe to us rah par chalna hi hai..."


Monday, November 2, 2015

When Vodafone gives every reason to the customer to feel dissatisfied and discontented with their services, great efforts should be made to change that thought and diffuse the situation. But Vodafone only believes in alienating and harassing customers even more and the matters get highly escalated.

 The case of deactivation of my numbers based on false feedback lies unresolved. And I have been deeply harassed in that case by their staff Sunder and Sunil Kumar. Now to add to it they harassed us further beyond comprehension by allowing their security guard threaten, harass and intimidate us when we visited the Sector 50 Noida Vodafone shop to get the case of the blocked World Calling card resolved. And all this occurred just because we said that we would involve the police as Vodafone is doing fraud by selling these defective cards. That is when the guard left his post to threaten my mother and I and challenged us to do whatever we could...The Vodafone representatives did not reprimand him for interfering in our conversation.

As it is the representative Rekha was continuously being rude before that to my mother when my mother requested to meet the Manager Vandana regarding this matter. Vandana had promised us a resolution but admitted to me on the phone yesterday morning that she had still not notified the Sales team about it or escalated the matter in a direction where the money could be refunded. We had given a week and a half to Rekha and Vandana to do their job and escalate our complaint to the Sales team so that either the card could be replaced or the money refunded. But they till yesterday had not done that and the expiry date of the card was nearing. So we were forced to visit the store for the third time yesterday evening and on arrival at the store we requested Rekha to make us meet the Manager.

First Rekha refused to accept our request and after a lot of persuasion and informing her about our rights she agreed to call her from the office at the basement. After a lot of waiting when we again insisted on meeting the Manager, she altered her previous statement and told us that the Manager is not available. We then went on to tell her that we want our money to be refunded for the blocked card she had sold us earlier on and that is when we reminded her that this could become a legal matter as they are proving to be fraud in this case. By then she started talking even more rudely to my mother who is a senior citizen and that is when I thought of recording the conversation on the voice recorder so that I could bring it to the notice of the Corporate Office as to how their staff treats us. The argument carried on and she kept talking in a raised voice to provoke us.

Just then out of the blue the guard came and verbally threatened us that he would also like to see how we go and complain about the matter to the cops. And when he realised that I was recording the conversation, he accused me of taking photographs which according to their so called rules is not permitted. I told him that I was not taking photographs but he refused to listen and ordered me to leave and I did not resist or decline. I co-operated immediately ! But as I was going out of their store, at the door he threatened that he would see me later ! And when I sensed that he was going to intimidate me physically as well right then I immediately withdrew and raised my voice to warn him that he dare not touch me or he could be held responsible for physical harassment of a lady customer. Fortunately for  me by then the crowd in the market had gathered and he stopped and moved back but he kept threatening me verbally even after that when I asked him for his name to report the matter to Vodafone. I would like to know which security company he belongs to.

By now I was out of the shop but he kept coming out to shout at me again and threatened me to leave and I told him that he may have the right to remove me from the premises but not from the corridor outside and people agreed with me. I also told him that from outside the store I have every right to take his picture now so that I could warn lady customers about this man before they decide to visit this store.

The entire Vodafone team permitted this guard to personally threaten us and I had to tell him to stop misbehaving. I repeat he even followed me outside the shop and before he could do anything further, I raised my voice and warned him that if he manhandled me he would be held accountable for harassing a woman.

My mother who is a senior citizen and I had the worst experience at this store. Never in our entire lifetime in different countries have we experienced such atrocious and hostile customer service. I have not missed out on anything in narrating this incident so that it is a fair summary of that dreadful incident. But it is sad to know that Vodafone employs gundas as guards and their staff lets them humiliate lady customers like this. I fear for the security of every woman at such stores !

Be careful when buying Vodafone World Calling Cards !

Vodafone cannot get away with each and everything they do to harass customers...First lies to protect their staff and then deactivation of my number ! And now they are refusing to replace the defective World Calling Card they sold us which could have been used by another person in my family. My mother had gone personally to complain about it and till now they have not even marked it to the company according to them so that they don't have to do anything once the expiry date arrives ! Seriously their representatives should stop fooling around at work and do their job !

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Vodafone forcing me to take my own number of nine years as a new connection now !

Why were so many numbers deactivated by Vodafone in October 2015 and that too at the end of the month and at the time of upgrading their technology ? Instead of admitting their mistake they falsely accuse the customer of not submitting updated documents ! Very convenient for them to blame the customer !
My number stands deactivated for a very long time now because of their carelessness which they are camouflaging by a false accusation against me. My number has been snatched away by Vodafone without proper investigation or verifying facts and they are saying that I can only have my number back by taking it as a new number now. I would like to point out that before all this happened, they had actually informed us about the change in relationship number of my account in last month's bill and I wonder if that contributed to their deactivation of my number ? Why ? Were they planning all along to deactivate many old numbers and force us to take our own numbers as new connections ? After deep researching, I found that many long time customers have faced the same problem around the end of October or just before the long weekend of Dusherra.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Vodafone social media team taking too long a time to address this matter

There has just been an endless wait for getting this case heard ! From the 19th of Oct. I have been giving Vodafone social media team more and more time but Sunil Kumar from the Nodal office got away by mentally harassing me even today and an investigation has not been carried out. 

I wonder whether my number as well as numbers of many customers were accidentally deactivated by Vodafone during system upgrade. In my case it may have been deliberately deactivated because I wanted to expose the inefficiency of the staff who even after verifying my documents put me through endless harassment and inconvenience ! 

Either way because of their inefficient staff I have suffered and now I am told that my number is considered a new number. I have had this number since 2009 and Vodafone had no right to deactivate it and in the process take away the plan I had subscribed to. 

The action of Sunil Kumar calls for suspicion as the law does not allow you to deactivate numbers in times of mobile number portability specially if the customer has cleared all dues. 

In the event of any unresolved issues between us, I had the right to port my number ! Vodafone had already barred my calls on the falsely made up feedback of their concerned team and it was not required to deactivate my number ! Why was all this done ? Why did the Nodal allow this ? Because they had something to hide and the best alternative for them was to deactivate my number so that they could prevent the case from being escalated further which would have hi- lighted Vodafone's deficiencies.

The social media team is taking endless time to deal with this and I have to wait till Monday now but I don't think they will do anything even that day or I see them clearly siding with the staff who is providing false feedback. Anyway let's wait and watch ! But I will continue promoting my petition to inform people about the dishonest business tones of Vodafone as they have troubled me beyond comprehension. On top of it Vodafone has sold unused blocked World Calling Cards to me just before all this.
Nodal's unfair resolution & intervening again at this level not acceptable !

The matter has gone past Nodal long time back because they provided unfair resolutions time and again on this case and I do not accept that ! And I have a right to escalate the matter if I am not satisfied with the unfair decision of the Nodal and Appellate Authority ! But they are even denying me that right by putting endless pressure to give in on their terms. Also they are appointing the same representative that they had assigned to this case earlier on and that person Sunil Kumar is incapable of settling the matter fairly. That man still remains adamant regarding refusal to carry out an investigation, send a written apology letter from people concerned who harassed me or activate my number. By deactivating my number deliberately they are abusing my right to port this number to Airtel.

 Nodal is still refusing to accept the fact that I had already submitted documents ( ID & Address proof) on the 3rd of June 2015 but their staff did not do their job rightly and update that information in my account which caused barring of my calls twice and finally deactivation of my number. Instead of investigating the matter or have their staff apologise to me in writing for all the inconvenience caused, the Nodal team from the beginning has not even tried to resolve the matter or addressed my complaint properly. They are only copying and pasting their old message in every mail they sent me till today and that message clearly reflects their believing the false feedback of their teams and passing unfair judgement based on that !

 As I have mentioned before as well that on the 21st of Oct. 2015 Sunil did not talk to me in an appropriate manner  when he called me. Like Sunder, he was very hostile in his attitude towards me in this entire case. It is clearly obvious that I would not be getting a fair resolution from Vodafone anytime soon as their social media page team keeps delaying addressing this complaint every day despite their assurances that they would look into it.  I communicated to the Nodal in response to their message today that again I am not satisfied with their resolution as I have lost faith in their ability to resolve customer complaints through their actions. What is the idea of Nodal intervening again at this time when the matter has been escalated this far specially they have no intention whatsoever for resolving this complaint fairly ?

 I will be escalating the matter further and as far as it can go. This is totally unacceptable that the Nodal Office is letting Vodafone representatives get away with continuous harassment of a customer. It is also very unfortunate that the Nodal team is aiding the customer service team and Noida Vodafone shop to cover up their lies and till date supporting them in deactivating my number impulsively without even letting an investigation take place. 

 The last time I mailed Nodal before this petition was my last attempt to give them a final chance for the third or fourt time to resolve this issue at their level but they have failed me and let me down as a customer who had repeatedly turned to them hoping that they would order an investigation of the matter and pass a fair judgement.  I have mails to prove their indifference in this entire matter. As I had stated earlier on first Vodafone should do their job and fix responsibility on the people concerned by investigating and asking them to apologise in writing and restore my services, and then I shall submit my documents again for the second time !


https://www.change.org/p/trai-department-of-telecommunications-vodafone-s-dishonest-business-tones?recruiter=409748796&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share_email_responsive



Vodafone allows harassment to continue through same representative !

Got a call from the same person Sunil (01171272522) who had intimidated me on the 21st and had deactivated my phone number ( after barring of calls before that ) because I communicated to him that I would be porting my number ! His stand remains the same ! I have told him to email me as I will not suffer more harassment on the phone...

I can't understand why after repeated requests to have written interactions on Vodafone social media page and my petition, Vodafone is making the same people get in touch with me who have spoilt the case and are refusing to investigate the matter or send an apology letter even now ? The fact is that I had submitted updated documents and their staff had verified it in June ! And yet my calls were barred twice and finally my number was deactivated !


https://www.change.org/p/trai-department-of-telecommunications-vodafone-s-dishonest-business-tones?recruiter=409748796&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share_email_responsive

Friday, October 30, 2015

Vodafone fails in satisfying customers / Bad customer service !

Customer service is all about pleasant interactions and reaching for solutions to tackle the problems of customers if any to enhance their experience.

 Customer service is all about recognising the needs of customers and not continually ignoring those needs. Companies need to be interactive with the customers to know their requirements and concerns to retain those customers and win back the dissatisfied ones. Also when one team fails to resolve an issues then right away another team should be detailed to address the complaint and that too promptly. Addressing complaints without delays and follow up after that are so important to keep customers satisfied . If they fail to do that then they fail as a service provider. 

Without communication nothing can ever be maintained or solved. Vodafone lacks in all those departments and so is miserable failing in meeting the expectations of it's customers.