Brand Names And Poor After Sales Services!

Its more than a week since the Sony TV in my mom's room conked off.

We have been loyal to 'Sun Direct' a DTH provider who is very popular in South India. It also has a good reach all over the world wherever South Indians live.

Both are brand names and command a certain cult following.

I had called the Sony Customer Services toll free number. They in turn gave us 2 telephone numbers of the dealers nearest to our area to contact. I did the needful. The dealer promised to send an engineer to check the fault immediately. I waited for a full 8 days yet no sign of any engineer in sight.
Yesterday and day before I had contacted the dealer but to no avail. So today I decided to call the toll free number yet again and directly complain about lack of service for such an international brand as Sony.

Soon enough an engineer walked in today late evening to check the TV set. A part gone is not in stock (a coil) so it will be replaced only on Saturday, Sunday or Monday. Further delay after checking the set now.

As for Sun Direct, they have just yanked off 'Vijay TV', 'Raj TV' discontinued the 'NDTV Goodtimes' among a few channels which I enjoyed immensely. A notice is pasted on to the screen if we surf the Vijay TV slot '121' requesting us to get in touch with our dealer, who will come to change the direction of the dish (which should take hardly 3 minutes to change). A change in the satellite frequency.
The local numbers were got with difficulty by ringing up the shop from where we bought the Sun Direct pack. Those 2 numbers are constantly playing a recorded message that the number cannot be reached! The same message for the past 1 week now!!
Soon our package will come to an end. I will certainly go in for some other service provider this time.

I am really disappointed that such brand names don't give prompt after sales service to their loyal customers.

We have to follow up several times before they oblige us. What a waste of our time. There are jobs for us but for the elderly their maximum source for entertainment is the TV. And if both the hardware and the software were to give us a hard time we are at their mercy for weeks together.

How I wish our lives were more simpler like in the olden times which was not dependent on the TV, 24 x 7.

Mahalakshmi.