[Resolved]  LG LCD TV — Extremely poor customer support

Address:

South 24 Parganas, West Bengal

This is with utmost disappointment with LG's customer care that I am writing this email.

Last year (2009) on 04-April, I had bought a 32" LG LCD TV (Jazz) in Kolkata from the Khosla Electronics dealership in Garia. I had bought this TV after months of research and being convinced that a company like LG will treat it's customers well. After all, the website of LG global promises the following to all it's customers:

Providing the Best Service
Showing Kindness & Respect
Fixing it Right the First Time

After only around 3 months of enjoying my newly bought LCD TV, the TV began to show problems. It would shut down all of a sudden and would not start up even after 5 minutes of pressing the remote button (right now it does not start up in the entire day). I was surprised that a costly product like an LCD TV and that too from LG was showing problems so soon; however, I thought that an electronic product might have problems and it would be just a couple of days before the problem is solved. After all, LG promised its customers "Fixing it Right the First Time". I was to be proven very wrong.

The first jolt came to me when I called up the customer service call center and I was told that the LG engineer would be coming to my home at a time that the LG customer service representatives set for me and I cannot give any choice in that regard. I was also told that they (the customer service representatives) have to close service calls within 1 day (to meet their internal SLA, I suppose) and hence if I booked a call on a weekday, I have to be present at my home within the next 24 hours waiting for the engineer to turn up. If I wanted the engineer to come on a weekend, then they have to close the service call and I have to call back on Friday. So they forcibly closed the service call when I said that if they did, they would be doing so without my consent. Inspite of that, they did. Since I work for a reputed MNC (India's biggest software exporter), I was under the impression that a service call cannot be closed without the customer's consent. But well.....this was LG's version of "Showing Kindness & Respect".

Anyways, I gave the customer service a call once again on Friday and an engineer visited my home on Saturday. He said that a PCB was faulty and that it had to replaced. He also said that the PCB comes from Delhi and most probably would take 7 days. After 7 days, another engineer (not the same person as before) turned up with the replacement PCB. However, this gentleman said after a second inspection that the PCB was not faulty and something else was (didnt tell me what). He said that part also comes from Delhi and would take another 7 days to arrive. Another 7 days passed and a third engineer (not the same as the first or the second) arrived at our home. This engineer had other thoughts and wanted to see what the problem was before he did anything (he was not satisfied with the diagnosis of the other engineers). The engineer was at my home for 30 mins and as with all electronic devices, the problem did not happen at that particular moment. The engineer said that he cannot do anything without seeing the problem and he left. During all these incidents I had literally called Mr Moloy (cell - +91 [protected]) from LG Kolkata Servicing around 50 times; however most of the times he did not pick up the phone - at other times, he just gave a thousand reasons why I was being subjected to this kind of harassment.

A few days back the problem resurfaced and we placed in a third service call. An engineer came in last week and said that the PCB was faulty. The enigneer again came in on Friday (02-April-2010) and replaced the PCB. However, today is Saturday (03-April-2010) and the problem is happening again. So much for LG's promise of "Fixing it Right the First Time".

When I gave Mr Sumit Dutta (cell - +91-[protected]) a call (he is the person that the engineer told us to call) half an hour back, he just told us to call the Customer service and said that he could not do anything regarding this. I am really surprised why the engineer gave his name and number if he could not do anything. When I asked him for a person whom I can report all of these, he told me straight out that he will not do that. I asked him for his email id and he said that he does not have an email id. He told me repeatedly (and rudely) that he cannot do anything and that I have to all the customer service.

During all these incidents, I was in India partly and in USA partly due to my job and my elder brother (Saurav Talukdar in Kolkata) and myself (Arnab Talukdar in USA) are really tired of following up with LG Customer Service. Right now I am in USA and writing this email with extreme frustration over LG, LG's customer service, LG's products and all of the people like Moloy and Sumit Dutta involved in these incidents. I have vowed to myself that I will not buy any other LG product in my life and will discourage anyone of my friends, relatives, acquaintances of doing so.

I have again logged a call (number - [protected]) for this but I am seriously thinking of moving the Consumer Court if adequate steps are not taken to correct this.

Some other call numbers that we had logged are given below. With all the call numbers I have forgotten which call number is for which and there are some more call numbers which I dont have with me right now but I suppose that if a search was made with my name (Arnab Talukdar) or my past mobile number ([protected]) or my elder brother's mobile number ([protected]), you would see that whatever I said are true. The numbers that I have with me right now are:

C09B1312384
C09B1902420
Also, please note that if noone takes notice of this right now, I have to forward this mail to other higher authorities of LG and I am determined to go upto the LG India Head if required. I am sure it will not be a problem getting hold his email ID.

The persons to contact regarding this mail or any queries are:
Saurav Talukdar (in Kolkata) - +91-[protected]/+91- [protected]
Arnab Talukdar (in USA) - +[protected]/+[protected]