Blackberry Curve Series Phone - BB Curve 8520 after a year plus of ownership. Poor Product and Service from Blackberry India.

My first mobile phone was a Philips phone in 1998 which were followed through the years by many phones from Nokia, Sony Ericson, LG, Samsung and then around 1.5 year back a Blackberry. Blackberry usage experience has been good but the handset itself is a bad experience in terms of reliability and usable life. Never seen a phone or its parts falling apart the way this Blackberry handset did.

Blackberry was out of compulsion to access corporate emails and I settled for the modest BB Curve 8520 which was purchased through the service provider Airtel. The phone felt robust in hand had a good keyboard, dedicated music buttons, rubberized grip around the phone, couple of buttons which can be customized and had decent features and easy to use.

After around 8 months of use the rubber parts on the body started feeling rough and grainy and I thought this is regular wear and tear. After few months I started seeing few cracks on it and eventually over next few months there were more of these. After a year or so the rubber material buttons started cracking and one fine day when I tried to press a button on side to turn on the data connection there was no button. The button (which is actually just part of the molded rubber part of the body) had just cracked and fallen some where. Over next week one by one all the buttons even the ones rarely used and rubber around the buttons had just vanished.

To my surprise in my office when I looked at BB curve phones used by others many of them had faced same problem and any one having a phone for more than a year typically had buttons on their phone missing. Many even had the buttons on top (three music/mute buttons) missing. Problem with missing button, you can not control volume and many other features of the phone and also water and dust can easily go inside and phone looks ugly.

See 2 buttons of right side gone and upper volume button in process of cracking and next one shows button gone.Left side one button also gone missing.

And now the Blackberry Service in India. 

When I called service center in Bangalore I was told body etc are not covered specially when it is one year old and out of warranty. I posted a message to BB India through twitter and then said they can look into it. I also posted few pictures for them to look at and informed the fact that it is not only me and many other users who have problem and it is a design issue with the kind of material and button design being used in the Curve series of phones. BB India informed that their service partner Redington will get in touch and fix problem for me.

Redington after few followups informed me they will cosmetic upgrade (change the body) on my phone in coming days but after few days informed that phone is not sold through their channel and they can not do any thing about it and will tell BB India the same. On reminding BB again they mentioned contact the service provider. They communicate through Twitter direct message and never have really looked into the issue seriously. Curve has been one of the best sellers for Blackberry but so many users have this problem due to bad design and poor choice of material. They continue to sell Curve series of phones with this design and even the newly launched model Curve 9220 uses similar rubberized button design.

E-Commerce - Indian Online Shopping Websites - Review and Experiences

Avoiding visiting crouded malls and shops and envouraged by good deals available online I have continued shopping online for technology and other items. I have already shared my experience with Letsbuy.com and now I thought of sharing my personal experiences with some of the other websites also.

Good experiences so far which I had based on my on shopping -
www.Ebay.in - for various items from different sellers. Ebay guarantee on delivery of product and resolution mechanism if sellers do not keep up their promise is quite good. Ofcourse you need to check reputation and earlier feedback of seller and check description of product carefully.

www.Flipkart.com - Placed 4-5 orders and all deliverd in time specially books ordering experience is very good. Also placed orders for memory devices. Prices are not best for memories but if some thing is needed urgently specially in Bangalore, I prefer to order from Flipkart. They delivered me a 16GB Sandisk card next day morning when an order was placed late in afternoon.

www.Myntra.com - Placed a shoes order and was delivered very fast in good condition with in 2 days.

www.zoomin.com/Cameras - Placed one Sony Camera order and delivered well packed in good factory sealed condition.

www.Homeshop18.com - Placed few orders including electronics items like hard disks, memories and other house hold items all received in good condition. Once there was a need to return item and return pickup was also quite efficient. They take orders and vendors fullfil for them. Returns also need to go to respective sellers but HS18 provides good service and assurance of delivery.

www.Futurebazaar.com - All most all of 5-6 orders were delivered well. Phone and email support is quite efficient. Some times they sell old stock of tools etc at very low price to clear inventories. Their I had noted few items with some rust but price I paid was farely low.

www.Koovs.com - Have placed 4-5 orders. All delivered. Their standard delivery time is 7 days. They have delivered all orders. Shipping can be faster.

Sulekha deals
deals.sulekha.com/- One order. Good experience. They take orders and vendors fullfil for them.

www.Greendust.com - Couple of memory orders. Slow in delivery but all items delivered.

www.Letsbuy.com. Bad experiences - You can see my detailed review of my TV order. You have to remind them to ship order or have to make noise on mouthshut.com to make them hear. Very difficult to get them on phone on their help line. Many false promises and delayed shipments.

www.Snapdeal.com Bad experience (March 2012) - Ordered a Samsung 16GB Micro SD Card (Class 10) and invoice, packing all communication was correctly showing the product but they delivered a lower speed grade card, a Class 6 instead of Class 10. Many other users also who had ordered the product received the same wrong product. Customer service responsiveness is also not so good. Haven't heard back to email I sent on this issue. Now either have to accept the product they have sent or get into hastle of sending product back and wait for another one or refund.

Clifton 
www.clifton.in - Overall negative experience. Two orders placed. Both were shipped and delivered after followup with the company later that commited time of delivery. They took 7+ days in both cases for a local Bangalore delivery. Second order product was a different color product
than what was ordered. Non standard deIt appears that E-commerce venture for them is an experimental one.

Difference between various online shopping site companies is primarily due to their attitude towards customer service and also to a large extend on how efficiently and accurately they can process order and have it efficiently shipped (IT and logistics part of business). Some sites have accurate inventory information and order status information available to customers and support staff e.g. Future Bazaar, Flipkart and Myntra appear to have things like this worked out and implemented well. Letsbuy appears to be doing a lot of things manually and most of their staff appears to be not so well trained or may be only trained on how to keep customer confused and occupied with false promises till their system some how takes care of the order processing if at all.

 Others and Many times problems are with the shipment/courier companies. So it is good to check which services these online shopping sites use. Best service - Bluedart, Fedex. Even professional courier is good. Worst experiences - Aramex.

In Feb 2012 - There are press reports that Flipkart is acquiring Letsbuy and Myntra. Such consolidation and acquisition by better performing companies will help overall e-commerce industry. Hope is that customer service and reach of these companies will improve.

Later it came out that Flipkart just acquired Letsbuy and Myntra continues to be an independent company.

Bad product quality of a laptop and worst customer service by HCL Infosystems

My relative in Punjab bought (or rather made a mistake of buying) an HCL laptop from authorized dealer in Kapurthala in Punjab for around Rs30000. (~ $650)

* Machine Serial No : 8084AX056382
* Product Code : AX0P2825
* Warranty Card No. : 10485949
* Date of Installation: 18/11/2008

After some time of purchase the machine started giving problems with the display which was reported to HCL and given to service center for warranty repair.. Even after keeping machine for weeks for repair a permanent fix was not done by HCL service and the same problem reoccurred 3rd time in October/November and machine was again given to HCL as it was still in warranty.

Calls to HCL's Support desk were essentially of no use and waste of time and effort. Machine was last given to HCL service center on 9th November 2009 and have not been returned by the company till date (today 7th January 2010). What kind of service is this? Essentially during last 12 months machine has been with HCL service for close to 4 months. So HCL has taken money for the laptop and in a way still owns the machine, Isn't that cheating?

Emails and calls to HCL helpline have not resulted in any thing. This example shows how some of these Indian companies treat customers.

I have suggested to file a consumer and civil court case against HCL Infosystems for compensation. I would suggest buying a laptop or a computer from Dell, Acer, HP, Compaq or Toshiba and avoid local brands specially HCL.

- Neeraj