Postal Department Notice: Customer Service? What the heck is that?
My heavenly experience with the Indian Postal freaking department!
Many folks apparently found the Zune Review Post of mine to be absurd and non related to chennai. Guess what im gonna blog again about my zune and i care not what you think but this time i will make you happy with chennai info on my zune experience.
So this gadget freak in me decides he will get his Microsoft Digital Entertainment Platform setup by new year 2008 and upgrade his comp big time with 29 inch LCD and 18 gigs of ram, 2 tb of disk space and finally looks around to see the zune is not yet in India, damn! Microsoft what were you thinking?!?
So i go to ebay and bid on a zune and beat the crap out of a Chinese guy by 18 seconds and big 2 dollars more than him and get it! Order the product via United States Parcel Service Priority Mail which is equivalent to our speed post. The normal delivery time is 6 to 10 days but since this will be subject to 13% tax i knew this may take another 2 days. Unfortunately nothing showed up even after 20 days, which is when i get pissed off.
I’d already raised a complaint with USPS who gave a clean chit that they handed it over to Indian Postal Department in Mumbai Airport on the 21st (i ordered the zune on the 12th and it was shipped on the 14th) which was a fair deal.
I head to the GPO in 1st lane beach road (right opposite to the beach station/burma bazaar) and i think that this was the most useless thing i ever did. I go into the enquiries department and i was given a pleasing welcome by a well mannered gentleman.
Surprisingly the worlds second largest populated countries postal departments foreign parcel departments investigation cell does not use computers! I’m like what the f***!!!!!
I mean, you dont need a Lenovo power house but you could have a dumb terminal with a mainframe backend that all personnel could use to track orders. So me, this gentleman and his female colleague take three Big ass ledgers, believe me when i say this, they were 3 foot long and about 2 foot across, that BIG!
We go through thousands of entries for Chennai 42 which is velachery, where i live in. Well at the end of 3 hours of searching we find nothing phenomenal. Now this guy says “I’m sorry sir we express our inability to help you. What i suggest is you call the American postal department and i launch an inquiry about this” and i told him i had already did that.
He then suggested i write a complaint and post it to the director of postal department chennai and as soon as an acknowledgment would come they would launch an investigation in two weeks time and if they cannot find it in 60 days they would give it in writing that the article is lost. I was baffled by the amount of nerve they had to tell me its gonna take another 60 days + 2 weeks for them to officially accept my package was lost.
I regretted saving that 20 dollars and not spending on Fed-Ex instead of USPS. Fed-Ex does it in 5 days flat. They have their own people at customs and they call you to ask if they can pay the money and release it from customs and later deliver the goods to you and collect the cash from you by cash or card. USPS however thinks our postal department is trustworthy enough to leave things in their hands. Why blame them? It is we who accept such inefficiency as a norm and go by who are to blame.
Anyways guess what? The very same evening this happened my post did come to me and the postman asked for 1300 bucks and i was at office. I took a break from work and then i go to the post office and they tell me that i have to wait for 1 hour since the postman is on rounds. Kudos to the postman because he promptly misinformed me that he would be at the post office till 6.30 pm when he spoke to me on the phone from my house.
I go there the next day morning and sign end number of papers and collect my zune which thankfully was well packed and in shape.
Phew! thats probably the last time on earth im gonna use the Indian Postal Department! Their Speed post to Bangalore which they promise a 24 hour delivery time took 8 days, my dumb ass should have learnt a lesson then but i was too good a fool to trust them again and give them a chance with a 8000 rupee worth parcel from half way around the world.
I’m waiting for my new sennehieser headphones to come, and this time i did Fed Ex and right now they are telling me through their hourly SMS update that my package that was shipped last afternoon is in hong kong as of now and will be in mumbai tomorrow morning and in chennai by tomorrow night.
Now thats what i call customer service or in other words, peace of mind!
One general question.
What is this 13%. Is this for any
electronic goods imported?
Where can I find more details?
Thanks
Buying ZUNE from US to be used in India!!!! Man, India has changed so much.
wow..your perseverance paid off..appreciate the tech enthu in you.. BTW Indian Postal Service needs a facelift not just in the dress but from the ground up.
Indian Postal Service does not need a facelift, it needs to privatised.
Hey,
Are you crazy or something. Bad attempt at damage controlling for the last post of urs. There are better products in India man and for the cost and time to get your flop Zune product did you go through all this pain. What a loser you are . Also why can’t people like you get into the Postal services by way of Civil Services Exam and shake the system. Developments do not happen because of conformists but because of rebels. However you sound like a ABCD(American Born Confused DESI) blabbering about flop american products. What a shame India has to bear the wieght of Pathetic Daft Losers like you.
“Many folks apparently found the Zune Review Post of mine to be absurd and non related to chennai. Guess what im gonna blog again about my zune and i care not what you think but this time i will make you happy with chennai info on my zune experience.” Your resentful and vague attitude is not appealing to us Dilip. If many don’t like ur post u better accept ur mistake and correct instead of circumloculating on the same Zune whatever topic. Hey are’nt there anyone moderating this, Mr. Dilip has gone on to write 3 articles in the last 3 days and 2 of them are pathetic and shows his chauvinistic show off attitude. Maybe u spent a zillion year to research on the first topic and that came out okay after ur peers editing it many times. Whatever the case it is, pls Dilip mama grow up man-u sound like a kid with a stupid ugly gadget in ur hand.
nancy, murali: thanks. im not so impressed with our postal service.
Coward: Wow, you sure are one arent you? There are 1 million problematic things in india. That means should i have one million jobs and change 1 million things. Zune is a flop, what were you doing all night? Weed or crack? Zune sold 1 million units in the first week of release and till date sold over 14 million units. Ipod sold 40 million units. Zune ranks second best selling player in the US market. You better know what you are talking mr. Techno morons like you dont impress me much.
ILOVDIL
Hahahahaha! Dilip u are so bad man and its funny to notice ur attitude and abuse others! Hehehehehe!
Hi Moderator,
Whats happening here. It used to be a good blog, why people like Dilip are spoiling everyhthing?
Suresh: A thorn needs to be dethorned with a thorn.
Ambika: So now im the one who spoilt the blog? Where do you people come from dudette?
Where is the thorn stuck in u Dilip. Gross man and sure sounds like getting dethroned so much for dethorned! Hehehehehe Cheers!
Suresh: Damn you are good. You appeared to be on my side and you get a same side goal. Did you try politics. Sottayan will pay you well, im sure. :-)
Pls pls pls Dilip take me with you I will always appear to be on your side and know the secret of being non-sottai @ 85 years from you. Now its evident where the thorn got stuck deep inside of you! I believe there are many thorns stuck after all the experiences you seem to have garnered from Politics to Blogging to God Knows what! Enjoy!
Suresh, lets start a political party and call it the Sottayans and Gundachchi’s Liberation force!!! Im the chairman and you are the secretary!
Hey Dilip Mama,
I believe you come from a family full of non-sottaiyans and non-gundacchi but the irony is that the sottaiyans and gundacchis have mentally and physically spelt a havoc in ur physical and mental health by abusive you either ways. So sad dude I forgive u for ur abuses and u can continue to shove the zune up ur ass filled with sand from the sea dunes and continue to blabber something to dimwits like Suresh.
This used to be a really nice mature chennai blog. I read this for Chennai. Dilip u lost ur second chance with another pathetic attempt and a poor attitude towards ur readers. Get over ur zune!
Dilip,
Zune as of now is available for $99. checkout buy.com. I would rather had some of my friend to bring it or fedex it. Its waste of time with indian postal department.
When i send letters from US to Chennai thro USPS, it reaches within 5 days. When my dad sent some photos to US thro post office, it took 25 days. Not sure what took them so much time.