[Resolved]  Hitachi Home & Life Solutions India [Hhli] — SR #[protected] and earlier Open Requests

Address:	Mehsana, Gujarat, 382727
Website:	www.jci-hitachi.com/contact/global-locations#india

As a customer, I rate Hitachi customer service just 1 (on a scale of 1 to 10). This is because there still exist a few honest executives in their employ; otherwise, Hitachi-India operations would have closed down long ago. Please take this feedback seriously and I will explain below my reasons to prove my point.

My top end model RAU019CVEA Split 1.5 ton Hitachi Kashikoi 400I Inverter R410A air conditioner purchased in June 2015 needed service and gas refill. I lodged my request with customer care[protected] at 11:45 AM on May 4, 2017 and their standard reply was “someone would come within 24 hours.” Due to the current heat wave, I requested an earlier action. However, it is over 96 hours now and there is not a single soul who has attended this case till date.
Please note very carefully the whole sequence of events from the time I lodged my request with customer care.
 4th May 2017:- I called the local service center (head office) in Bowenpally and spoke with their Service In-charge, Mr. Kiran @[protected] and was made to understand that the Bowenpally service centre does not take care of AC service any longer and I would need to touch base with the Malkajgiri service centre
 After a lot of effort and several phone calls to customer care number, I finally managed to get some contact number of the Malkajgiri service centre
 I then contacted the Malkajgiri service center @ +[protected] where only one Telugu speaking lady receives the calls stating that she cannot speak English or Hindi (this is ridiculous!) and disconnected my call abruptly 3 times. Again after a lot of effort I managed to get the Service Incharge, Shaikh Mansoor’s mobile number (+[protected]
 Upon calling Mr. Mansoor quoting the request number, he ridiculed stating that the ticket was logged just today and the turn-around time is 48 hours. When I differed on that, he mentioned that the maximum TAT is 48 hours and that the case would be attended to before that time period itself and they promised to send someone soon
 5th May 2017:- I followed up with Mr Mansoor the following day and he just had one technician (Karthik @ +[protected] call me for the sake of it and when I mentioned that I have an inverter AC which would require R410A gas, he mentioned that he only carries R22A gas with him and for the compatible gas he would go back to the service centre and bring the required tools along with the gas, but he did not turn up
 When I got back to Mr Mansoor he mentioned that the technicians who are outdoor are not carrying the required gas for top-up and he was trying to contact their so-called Service In-charge, Mr Kiran, from Bowenpally (head office) service centre so that he could send someone form there and promised me that he would have this resolved by end of day and when that did not happen he conveniently chose to ignore my phone calls
 Rest of the day my calls to both Kiran (I got to speak with Kiran only the first time when I called him on 4th and after that he may have blocked my numbers to avoid me) and Mansoor were unanswered and not returned too
 Surprisingly I received a call from another technician (Sai @ [protected]) who said he has left from Bowenpally service centre following instructions from Kiran and he too was not equipped to solve for my inverter AC when I spoke with him and he hung up on me like the rest of the folks and did not turn up till now. A food for thought… the previous day I was told by Kiran that the Bownenpally service centre does not manage AC service / repairs (just to pass the buck around I suppose), and then Mansoor tells me that he would need to contact Kiran and have him send one of his technicians to fix my AC…
 6th May 2017:- Still no response from Hitachi and my calls to everyone concerned were unanswered. Irresponsibly none of them even bothered to return my calls. I also sent them text messages, but still in vain
 At around 01:30 PM (50 hours from the time the call was logged) I again called back customer care and had to argue with one executive Mr. Mayank (who was even refusing the accept that the 48 hours TAT was exceeded) for more than 15 minutes to make him transfer the call to his supervisor (he was refusing to even transfer the call to the next level until I scolded him)
 I then spoke with the supervisor, Mahesh, when the call was escalated to him around 01.45 PM and narrated the entire incident to him. From the entire series of events until now, Mahesh seemed to be the only sensible person around and he then conferenced the call with Kiran who promptly answered Mahesh’s call. When I asked him why he was avoiding my calls the last 3 days he started off with a lame excuse stating he was unwell and couldn’t take my calls. Whereas he was on duty giving instructions to his team on all the service / repair cases. I was obviously very upset by this time due to the unprofessionalism displayed by their employees and that displayed in my tone. But instead of being apologetic, Mr Kiran started getting defensive and was very rude on the conference call too. If required, I can share with you this complete conference conversation recording, and you can judge for yourself the kind of behavior displayed by Mr Kiran and Mr Mansoor !!!
 At this point I finally told them that I rest my case here and will take this matter up with the appropriate forum for action (Consumer forum and Social media)

Apart from all this there has been one major issue with the AC’s remote control since DAY 1 that has not been fixed till date. This seems to be a manufacturing defect and the same was admitted by their technicians who had visited the first time to attend to this complaint way back in 2015 and also mentioned that there are other unhappy customers too who have been facing the same issue with this model AC.
It may be of interest to you that the showroom incharge from where this was purchased had strongly suggested us to go for Samsung instead, as it was lesser in price and provided much better after-sales support, but unfortunately I went against their advice and settled for Hitachi for which I had to wait for close to a month for delivery as the so-called top-end best model that I selected was not available in any of the stores and had to be shipped separately for me…JUST BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT HITACHI WAS NO.1 BRAND IN AIR CONDITIONERS !!!

A copy of this email has also been sent to the Hitachi to bring this to the attention of their parent organization about the on-goings and awful after-sales support form Johnson Hitachi in India yesterday, however there has been no response from their management yet.