Bengaluru: In a record of its sorts, a cell phone service provider has sent a cheque of 11 paise to one of its customers in Bengaluru after the latter migrated from their mobile network to another one citing dissatisfaction with their services.
The cheque recipient, Anil Bhardwaj, a radio jockey and producer with a well known FM radio station was fuming at the service provider terming the ‘unusual’ response. “How stupid and ignorant can a company get down to, dealing with a customer,” he said.
Anil also suspects whether the ‘response’ by the cell phone company was meant to make a mockery of him as a dissatisfied customer, as he remembers he had made numerous phone calls to the customer service to report complaints on the services.
The Standard Chartered Bank cheque (dated February 15) was for '0.11, an account payee cheque payable at par at any its branches in India, was dispatched along with a letter which read — it was with reference to the customer’s request for refund of security deposit/excess payment against the mobile phone.
“First of all, I haven’t requested for any refund or anything of sorts from the service provider to send me a cheque like this,” Anil quipped, adding that for getting this 11 paise en-cashed into my account, I have to probably put a half day’s leave from my work, go all the way to the bank and get the transaction done, which I bet would cost me more than what’s on the cheque. “If the mobile phone company understands this, then why do they send cheque for such a trivial amount? I would have been happier if they had simply rounded off that amount and just ignored it,” the radio jockey added.
Sources from the cell phone company said “Cheques for refund of security deposits or excess amounts are usually not sent to customers if the total amount is less than Rs 100, as the system does not generate or process such requests automatically, and we understand that it would cost the same money for the bank transaction to be completed. However, if a customer walks in at any of our outlets with a request claiming any refund amount after they have migrated from our network, we would be happy to do so.”
