Dear Friends,
I guess that its time that I told you another horror story about the private sector and its 'efficiency' & 'dedication' towards 'service' to the consumers. This time the story is about Nokia-the mobile phone giant.
Like a lot of people in India I have been using a Nokia mobile phone. To be truthful, the quality of the set per-se is good. However, even good products become old and require repair/service once in a while. So I was not surprised when my handset gave me an ultimatum that it needed a doctor ! Actually what happened was that the main speaker of my phone (which we place on our ear) had been malfunctioning in for some time. I had circumvented this problem by using the hands-free option. The newer models of Nokia have a simple hands-free attachment which has a standard pin that plugs into a jack in the phone. This jack is of the sort that you find in most laptops, TVs etc. Things were working fine this way till a few days ago when, when I inserted the pin of the hands-free attachment into the jack, the phone did not detect the attachment. I fiddled around a bit, turning the pin this way and that. On this the phone detected the same. This continued for a day. However, fearful that I would lose this function completely, I decided to show my phone at an authorized Nokia service center. I took the phone to one such center in Allahabad (please note that it was an authorized service center and not a 'Nokia Care' office). The 'engineer' there saw the phone and without examining it diagnosed that the headphone jack had become defective and would have to be replaced at a cost of Rs. 650/-. I told him that this appeared to be rather high for a jack and asked him if there was any way to repair it at a lesser cost. After he replied in the negative, I went to a 'Nokia Care' office, where, after examining my phone they told me-and I quote-"The jack of the phone is defective. There seem to be some more problems. You will have to leave the phone for at least 48 hours. There is no guarantee about the data and bill for repair would be within Rs.1000/-". At first I was inclined to leave my phone behind but good sense prevailed and I didn't. Instead I took the phone to a local mobile phone mechanic. Once I had explained to him the nature of the problem, he took the phone from me, cleaned the innards of the jack with a pair of pointed forceps, adjusted the contacts inside the jack that touch the pin of the hands-free and returned the phone to me. I tested the phone several times by inserting and removing the pin of the hands-free into the jack, and each time the phone detected the hands-free perfectly. I could not believe my eyes ! There was actually no problem with the jack at all save some accumulated dirt and contacts that required slight manipulation ! I offered money to the mechanic but he refused, saying that actually there was nothing wrong with the phone and he had done 'nothing' that would warrant a payment from me. This time I could not believe my ears ! I thanked him profusely for his help and honesty and went back to the authorized service center of Nokia. There I told them how my phone had been set right in five minutes flat with minimum intervention , by a smalltime mechanic and that too for Free !!! They really had no answer to my question as to why they attempted to wrangle out Rs.650 from me for something that was so petty that another person did it in five minutes for free ? They really had no answers. Finally, after some thought, the owner of the service center replied. "If you go to a big hospital, you will have to pay for the tests and the CAT scan wont you ?".
What can I say? Glory be to the thieves of the Private Sector !!
