Experience with Philips!!

Just yesterday, we got our new Philips water purifier model WP3890 installed at our place. Now you must be wondering what's so new about that? Water purifiers are kind-of part of every domestic household. Well, you are right! But what I wanted to share was our experience with the company.

Research

Since it was our first purchase of purifier, we decided to do some research about the technology. We went through plethora of websites understanding the meaning of each term, so gloriously used by the manufacturers. They all sound so out-of-space terms, that prospective customer may think, wow! this purifier must be doing some additional purification!! Gosh!

Anyway, thanks to the time spent, we finally chose Philips over Eureka, owing to all the bad reviews about the latter's service.

In fact, we even went to the extent of verifying the gold seal certification by WQA also. I know, some may find this wierd and waste of time, but then we are too cautious! No offence but marketing community has got very little reliability factor left in our minds to just go by their tall claims of being the best and blindly choose a product.

Just to make our research complete, we stumbled upon the Dos and Donts page of Philips. Few of them were so obvious ones that we both broke into peals of laughter. Not at the list, but the fact that there are people who might actually do them, if not instructed otherwise!! Its like telling customers who purchased hot coffee that "it is hot!!" You know what I mean, right! I am pasting the few of the funny ones below, the remaining are the regular ones.

Do's and Don'ts
To help you use the Intelligent Water Purifier safely, here are some useful tips. Kindly go through these tips thoroughly to avoid any kind of hazardous situations.
Comments in the brackets are my exclamations, I could not resist it!!

The Do's

--> Install the Intelligent Water Purifier at a safe location so that it does not come in the way of your normal routine.
......

--> When in use, place a container below the Intelligent Water Purifier to avoid spillage.(Wonder who would leave the tap running with no container below!!)

The Don'ts

--> Don’t spill water on to the Intelligent Water Purifier.
--> Don’t install the Intelligent Water Purifier close to a gas stove or over the cooking range.
......
--> Don’t store the water in open containers.(Defeats the purpose of the purifier, right!!)

--> Do not connect the Intelligent Water Purifier to a drain outlet.(This one is my personal favorite, 'coz its unthinkable!!)

--> Do not store anything on the Intelligent Water Purifier.

--> Do not use the piping or wires for hanging anything. (Like a towel hanger!! Gosh!!)

--> Do not clean any plastic parts in a dishwasher or boil them.(Awesome!!)

Final Selection

So, we chose the UV technology purifier and chose Philips WP 3890. UV technology is better suited for municipal water or so to say soft water, while RO(Reverse Osmosis) is best suited for hard water.

Eureka was on our list too but there is lot of dependency on its service center even after installation, hence decided to go for a product that gives us independence from human interaction as far as possible. This product has a candle that can be replaced by us. All we have to do is just go and purchase the candle from the service center every 3000 liters. Even regular cleaning done with a button. So lot of ease for us.

Installation

Now this is the main part of our ordeal which forced me to write this post.

We purchased the product on a sunday. Since, the customer care centers are closed that day, we had to wait till monday to book for installation. We booked on Monday and were given an appointment on Wednesday evening and the same was confirmed via an SMS. The company claims to install the product within 48 hours of your booking.

Wednesday comes and no call from any technician to confirm the appointment or take directions to our house, which is generally the case. So, we call the customer care again and they confirm that a person will come as already confirmed. And as soon as we kept down the phone, we receive an SMS that our appointment is pushed to next Wednesday, that is a week later. Imagine our shock and dismay!!

So, we call the customer care again and this time a new guy attends the call and says that our system confirms appointment of next wednesday as there are no available slots before that. We asked him how were we given an appointment earlier. And he answers blah! blah! blah to add to our consternation. Well, there is no point talking logic to customer care people as they are trained to answer only one thing for all questions, "We apologise for the inconvenience but there are no available slots!!" At that time, we realised we will not get any meaningful response from them.

Then, we visited the Philips website and sent an email stating our complaint to them with very little hope of any action being taken.

To our surprise, the next day the grievance cell person calls up and explains the situation to us that there was a total goof up at the request handling and that we will see that the process is expedited.

Anyway, the call itself cooled us down that at least there is someone reading our complaints and taking them seriously. Well, that was not all. In an hour, we receive a call from a technician that he will be visiting our place for installation the same day.

He came 2 hours earlier than the appointment time and did a fine job at installation.

We just could not believe it. Thus, Philips did keep up its promise. As a good customer, we sent them a "Thank You" mail too. I guess, it deserved a compliment for the prompt service.

To be very honest, we had lost all hope and thought we might have to finally hire a local plumber or wage a war as we might receive another SMS next time. But, they just surprised us so much that although, its been just a day old, yet we have full confidence on the product too.

The best part in this whole thing was that though, it is a big company, it values its customers dearly and not forget them, leave them in a lurch once they have sold their product, which is the case most of the time. In fact, all the time!! I kept scratching my head to think of any past experience which had been as pleasant as this one, but in vain. This is our first experience with a product company which has lived up to our expectations!! :) Guess, Airtel was the other company with whom we have had a trouble-free experience till date.

People have such harrowing experiences with poor, inefficient and indifferent After-Sales dept of the product companies, generally, that one loses trust and confidence.

Just pray that we keep getting pure water and there are readers who have similar positive incidents to report. Wish that atleast there is one report to instill in us the hope that all is not that bad out there!! :)