It was our 25th Wedding Anniversary and I wanted to make it special.
I decided to buy her a pair of diamond earrings from Tanishq and eagerly went to their supposedly flagship store at Bund Garden in Pune.
I aim to share my experience in detail, but for those hard-pressed for time I shall highlight the salient points of my traumatic shopping tryst.
Those who wish to know what even a reputed brand like Tanishq is capable of......or rather incapable of may read further.
Pre - sale service
Warm, friendly, courteous.
A special mention and thanks to Mrs.Shubhangi Jadhav for her excellent service!
After sales service
Heartbreakingly disappointing, rotten, pathetic.
This is what they have done
1. Kept a defective piece of diamond jewellery in their counter for sale.
In addition to the earrings, we ended up buying a diamond pendant worth 75 lakhs. My wife had liked it on an earlier visit and I happily indulged her.
The pendant had a stone missing which we or their staff did not notice initially.
2. Faulty, incorrect billing
There was a difference in the weight when we checked. A note of this was made on a form prior to billing.
Despite knowing about it the staff went ahead and made the bill as per the tag weight, which was more than the actual weight, a fact we noticed on further checking the invoice the next day after reaching home.
We called them. The store cross -checked and confirmed this fact and offered to replace the pendant with a new one from another store in 8 days time.
We agreed and did not pester the store even once with calls for 8 days even though we were very dejected.
3. Keeping jewellery for sale in another showroom without hallmarking
The pendant was ordered from a store in Ahmednagar apparently and it reached them on the 6th day.
Nobody bothered to call us with the good news.
It was only after I called the store after 8 days they said it had come and I was asked to collect it from the store.
We eagerly got ready and called the store to let them know we were coming.
To our utter dismay, they said that the piece of jewellery was not logged into the store system and that they would call back, which of course they didn't.
When I called back after 2 hours they said that the piece was not hall-marked and we would have to wait another 3~4 days.
They should have done this on the 6th day when they received the item.
Of course, they didn't.
By this point, I was very upset and asked to speak to the store manager.
I was put through to the floor manager of the gold section for a diamond pendant which is ridiculous to my mind
Floor manager instead of store manager
Gold section instead of diamond section
Dissatisfied with his explanations I insisted on speaking to the store manager.
He promised to call back in 10 mins, which of course he didn't.
I called back after 1 hour and gave them an ultimatum to either give me the new pendant the same day or refund my money.
To my utter astonishment, they said that the refund process would need approvals and would take 10-12 days.
This is for no fault from my side.
I reluctantly agreed to take the pendant even though the purchase had happened in an inauspicious manner and didn't bode well.
What is flabbergasting to me is that a brand like Tanishq can operate in such an unprofessional manner and dish out such unpleasant shopping experiences.
4. Reluctance to correct the invoice
We wearily went to collect the pendant in the middle of a family wedding with my wife having freshly applied mehendi on her hands.
The new pendant was bent, out of shape and had a dull, unappealing finish compared to our original purchase.
Disappointed again, we decided to retain the first defective pendant and end the matter there.
We asked them to rectify the first invoice as per the correct weight.
To this request too they expressed inability as approval would have to be taken and that their hands were tied.
They offered to reimburse the cash for the missing stone as a solution.
Thoroughly fed up we agreed upon that too.
This refund cash I left as a payment for the excellent tea and coffee we had during our first visit as I did not wish to take a single obligation from a store that really had nothing to give.
My major grouse is that not a single person at the store took a single pro-active step at any stage of this traumatic experience to assuage a disappointed, dissatisfied customer.
At every solution we offered them they hid behind the excuse that the systems in place did not allow them and that they were helpless.
While I understand and fully support the need for having systems and processes in place to manage a business of this size, it should not be inhibiting and at the cost of upsetting/losing a customer; especially, since it was a mess of their own creation and they were the ones naturally obligated to clean it up.
Not a single person in the store had the ability to take a decision to resolve a tragedy entirely of their own making.
It may be taken to be a rant....it probably is.....justifiably so, or a conspiracy by rival competitors.
Trust me it is not so.
It is heartfelt anguish that my 25th Wedding Anniversary, that I tried hard to make special beyond my capacity as a middle-class person turned out to be such a disaster.
It is also to create awareness amongst customers to check and cross check every detail before finalising a purchase no matter how big the brand to avoid the mishap of my experience.
It will take a miracle for me to step into Tanishq Bund Garden again.
P.S. The mistakes have been accepted by the relevant staff.
All that I have stated can be verified.
My contact no. is 9890044180
