RutSum

Hotspot Customer Care And My Sony Ericsson K530i

Well yeah I am a careless little ass and so I leave my phone on the bed. And I also leave my clothes on the bed after I change. What happened was that I left a shirt over my phone on the bed. The doorbell rang, and when I stood up to get it, I accidentally put my knee on the shirt, over the phone and broke its display.

No worries, I was extra cautious and that’s why I bought a care pack from Hotspot (where I bought the phone from), which included accidental warranty. I called up Sneezy, who had given his phone for repair to the same Hotspot and he confirmed that indeed those guys would do the job for free if I had a care pack.

I took it to the Hotspot dealer a few days later. He took the handset from me, and gave me a job receipt. I looked at the receipt; he had left the “Estimated date of completion of job” blank. I asked him when I would get my phone back. He said it would take at least 10 days. I told him to write it down on the receipt. He said, “Arre bhai aapko bola na, 10 din mein ho jayega, tension kyun lete ho?”

I went back to the Hotspot 10 days later, and as expected, my phone had not been repaired yet. He said it would take 2-3 more days and that they would call me when it arrives (That is what everybody seems to be saying these days, even the Bank of Baroda guys say the same thing, but no one actually calls up). I took their visiting card.

I called them back after 3 days, and they say that my phone has still not arrived. They gave me a number, for the Hotspot service center in Lajpat Nagar, and said that I could confirm the status of my phone with them. The number was 60005566. I was unable to call the number. I tried with my cell phone, my landline, and a friend’s cell phone. I tried it with a zero, as it is, with a 011, with a 0112, no luck. I just couldn’t get through to the number. The number was also mentioned on the bottom of the job receipt. It is also mentioned on their official website.

I went to the Hotspot again the next day and asked him to call the number he had given to me, because I was unable to reach it. He called them, and it went through (weird) and they said that the display for the K530i was out of stock and that was the reason for delay of the repair. I was promised I would get the phone in another week, and I would get a call whenever my phone was ready.

Yesterday I was passing through the area where the Hotspot was located, and I decided to give it a shot. I walked in and asked the guy at the desk if my phone had arrived. He said it would arrive after Holi. I started shouting at him because I was tired of their excuses. He said they would call me when my handset arrived. Right at that moment, the manager (or whoever he was) said that my handset had arrived. He pulled out my handset from inside a drawer.

This made me even more angry. The guy who was at the desk was confident that my phone had not arrived yet, when in fact he had no idea at all. He gave me attitude and told me that he would call when it would arrive. Now that it had arrived, I had received no calls. I wanted to punch that dude in the face right there. But I refrained. As I always do.

I checked my phone over there, and the screen was fine. I gave the manager the job receipt, took my phone, and left.

Bottom line? Hotspot is added to the long list of businesses with Crappy Customer Care. Do not buy a phone from Hotspot. They torture their customers for warranty.

If you liked this post, or found it useful, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email. Or maybe you'd like to know what I'm doing right now, by following me at Twitter.