Tag: Myself

Not so classy

This is the third post in the series of customer care. This one is a partly third person review. Today it’s the airlines Etihad Airways.

Quick background.

My parents flew business class on Etihad airways. One of the flights was more than 14 hours long. My mother (no she doesn’t have any medical condition that stop her from flying or eating crappy Airline food and stop having negative thoughts!!!) doesn’t eat onion or garlic in her meal. So I booked Hindu Jain vegetation meal for her.

On her 14 hour long flight she was offered a breakfast and that’s it. When she asked for more she was told nothing is available for Hindu Jain meal. She told them she can have fruits, bread, dry fruits and juice. So it was offered to her. All she was offered on a 14 hour flight was breakfast, fruits, juice, some dry fruits and bread. I believe people are served better food on shorter economy class flights. So this was the third party review. Because I don’t know how much food was served to my mother and what quantity.

But let’s review the customer care of Etihad. I dropped them a feedback on their official website and there was no reply. I assumed because there are more than million people airlines so who will take care of so many feedback. So I decided to call up the customer care. Being a global brand contacting customer care till less than 5 minutes to be connected to a representative. After telling him all the issue he said that because my mother has a special meal so and the crew carry just one meal per person. I asked him should I pack lunch for my mother and he said yes. The customer service representative forgot that my parents are flying business class and not economy. But none the less he took my compliant and seems to forward to his internal team. Not till date there is no update from them.

My rating for Etihad of
Customer Service = -/5 (i have not received the service so cant comment on this)
Customer Care = 0/5 (No Updates, zero follow ups and clueless customer care executives.)

Not So Quikr

This is post is second in the series of customer care. Today its the “Online Raddi Wala” www.Quikr.com.

Quikr has new feature where you can opt to pay for the product online and quikr will pick up the product and deliver for free.

I was looking for second hand cell phone for myself. After checking out the website and zeroing on a phone I called up the seller and agreed on a price. I paid the amount online and waited for the product to be delivered. It was almost a happy experience with till now.

After 3 days I called up the customer care for update. They said they have raised a request and someone will call me within 24-48 hours. Fast forward 3 more days and multiples call to customer care. The customer care has a very peculiar issue that the call if its not answered by a customer care executive in a minute will automatically be disconnected. you are lucky if the call gets connected at the first attempt. After umpteen tries and don’t know after how many calls to customer care, I am yet to receive a update or my money.

My rating for quikr of
Customer Service = 0/5 (I am yet to receive any service)
Customer Care = 2/5 (They remained calm and composed even through my shouting and angry rants)

For those who want to know what phone I was planning to buy checkout the link of the ad

Keep Counting

Lets take stock of our lives. When we are kids we used to go to the shop next door, which had the ever smiling uncle to cater to all your needs. I don’t remember seeing that uncle getting angry at us. He even used to send chotu with all the items. Reminds of something? For those getting nostalgic STOP!!!. Now we have “next door online store” who do all this and more with cheaper prices.

But one thing which I think is always a hit or a miss. The customer service. I will provide my take on various customer service I received from various “next door online store”

The first one for I want to take on is www.Musafir.com . My dad is coming to bangalore and asked me to book tickets for him. I thought lets try this new website musafir. I check the site and it was not displaying the prices of the airlines I was looking for. I was bored so thought of giving them a call and letting them know. But as the luck would be I got one of the best customer care executive out there. He was courteous, patient and knowledgeable given that it was midnight (yeah it was 11:45 PM when I called in, didn’t I said I was bored?). You rarely find good customer care executive in night shift. But boy was I wrong. Musafir team helped me find the best fare and even applied a discount code for me, which is rare. This agent was with till I have done the payment and once everything was done. He even called and confirmed If I have received the ticket.

One cute thing though, when calling out phonetic names for M instead of using “Mike” they say “Musafir”

Hope musafir keeps the customer care to top notch.

Musafir Customer Care gets 5/5

Keep counting the ratings guys.

For My Friends

Its been exactly one year and I have not updated this page. The last time it was to wish you guys a new year. Looks like this time it’s for the same reason.

Wishing you all readers a happy new year 2013. Seems like the mayan calendar had a bug and no one bothered to fix it. Jokes apart, the reason for this post is my friends. I saw my blog open on one of friend’s computer screen, and I asked why is this open? His answer I love this site, why don’t you write more? So this post goes to you.

Speaking of friends, there are different type of friends, some are casual, some fast, so best and some no string attached ( if you know what it means *wink* *wink*). I have my share of friends and its the friends which makes a person. I was blessed with friends with who I learnt some valuable lesson of life, about girl, about birds and bees ( and world thinks its the parents who have a give a talk about this)

Birds and bees remind me of two thing courtship and marriage. A quick poll how many of you hated it when your roommate, colleague, flatmate keeps of yakking all night of phone and all you can do is watch. I had my fair share of the same. sometimes it was me who hated my friends on the phone and sometimes the roles reversed.

There are different roles one plays in their life, from a supporter to an arch rival, from a lover to a enemy, from a friend to a foe, from a shoulder to cry on to a elbow jab which make you cry.  But one role is played by all of us and that is of a peer.

Peers lead to something called peer pressure. For those who don’t know what this thing is let me given you some hint. It is because of this you bought that new phone/iPod/ Car/ Home or you went to that play/ outing/ joint/ disco/ bar  because all your friends are doing and you don’t want to stay behind in the rat race.

I am running a rat race of my self, in fact there are two of them. One is to earn more, and other is get my brother married so that I can also get married because all the cool guys are doing it. 🙂

King of bad times

How many of you paid few bucks extra to fly kingfisher airlines to just because they are king of good times. My flight from Bangalore to mumbai was suppose to be the one of the good times flight. But it turned out to be dud.

The ordeal started even before I have reached the airport. 18 hours before i have to flu I get a call from kf’s office to notify me that my flight has been cancelled due to “technical reasons” and they have booked me on another flight. Fine by me. Now my flight depart one and half hour before.

I reach airport as per the new flight time. we are promptly boarded on the plane just to be told by the captain that there is low visibility and so the flight may be delayed. It’s fine by us but the captain forgot to tell us that the delay is of one and half hour only.

Remember it’s a kingfisher airlines so there is in flight entertainment. Hahahahaha forget it. They don’t have ear phones and the stupid me this was the day I have forgotten my pair of earphones.

Next comes the gourmet food. Masala omelette with tossed veggies. Just to find that the omelette was undercooked. That’s a great day for the good times.