Service issues cause concern

Pooja Sharma New Delhi, Oct 4

American Power Conversion (APC), has been banned in Panipat. The
Panipat Computer Dealers Association (PCDA) placed banned the company recently,
owing to service issues.

Confirming the same, Ajay Singla, Chairman, PCDA said that there
were several service issues that were pending and piling up from the company's
end. Customers thought that because they had logged a complaint, their service
issues would get meted out. But nothing of the sort happened.

"We had issued a billing suspension order against APC
products last month. This was due to their repeated negligence pertaining to
poor after-sales services," Singla informed.

It was learnt that a month ago the association had held a
meeting with APC representatives, which included Anuj Kudesia, Regional Sales
Manager; Om Batra, Partner Sales Manager; Neeraj Tyagi and Debashish Ray. During
the meeting, several issues pertaining to services were discussed and the APC
representatives had then promised that there would be an improvement in the
services of APC products in future. But instead, the service efforts got worse,
despite conducting a meeting with the vendor representatives, said Singla. This
aside, he complained that even the service center was manipulating the call
status and earning money at the cost of the customers. "There were so many
complaints which are still pending as per the feedback given by customers. But
according to company records the said calls are closed. Customers are suffering
a lot but no one is paying attention to their problems," said Singla.

The association stated that it had the documentation of seven
such calls and Singla was sure to receive more complaints. When he got in touch
with APC's Debashish Ray to inform him personally about the imminent ban, he
only got more assurances, but no solutions.

According to the association, the statements given by the call
center and the APC employees contradicted each other, thus leading to further
confusion. When the association tried to contact Sanjay, another representative
from APC, he not only ignored them, but also showed no signs of taking the
matter seriously.

When contacted, Anuj Kudesia, Regional Sales Manager, APC, said
that he was unaware of any intimation or notice sent to them by the association.
However he did mention that the issue was sorted out and was not pending for
over a month as reported. "Had we not settled the issue earlier the dealers
would not have continued to buy the products from APC," added Kudesia. He
also said that the complaints that were made earlier were all sorted out as
promised within 96 hours, and hence were closed.

At present the association has stopped all billing to the
company and placed a ban until someone from the company takes note of the same.
An e-mail notification has been sent to all the APC representatives.