Reebok In The Land Of No Return
What happens when the global brand you had bought with such excitement turns out to be defective? Get it changed, of course. Had it been an Indian brand, you would have had to settle for a repair job, but surely global brands are different. In developed countries when a customer drops in with what looks like a genuine complaint, shops change products often without asking for the receipt. They are more concerned about restoring the product's and their outlet's reputation. I have had Bata change something that gave trouble, within the guarantee period of course. But the experience of a friend was quite different.
He bought his son a pair of Reeboks for what to him was an astronomical Rs 3,300. In two months the insoles had come off. So he sacrificed a Saturday afternoon to take them to the company showroom in Connaught Place for redressal. The shop assistant would do nothing as he did not have the receipt, despite being told that the credit card statement could be produced. He also doubted if the shoes were bought there, as they did not stock that design a couple of months back. Why not try the other Reebok shop in the next block; maybe they had sold him the pair.
The situation in the other shop was worse. They were a franchisee and would not even look at something they had not sold. My friend then asked to be connected to the company management, who, he was told, were not available during the weekend. The maximum the manager eventually offered to do was to repair the shoes in a few days, which meant having to spend time on another visit. The shop assistants were quite spirited in their defence of the Reebok culture as they understood it and one girl at the cash counter saw nothing wrong with the sign on display "No exchange, no return". We have a sale on, you see, and there's no return of anything bought during a sale. But what if a defective Reebok product is sold during a sale? Tough luck, it seemed.
My friend went home and dug out his credit card statement and there it was; the shoes had been bought from the shop he'd gone to first! He rang Reebok's South Asia head office on Monday morning but got nowhere until he was forced to reveal his journalistic identity. Tones and attitudes changed miraculously and he was asked to go to the original shop where, he was assured, his problem would be attended to. So he trudged back to where his journey had begun and this time the shoes were changed.
The boy was happy to have his shoes back and the father thought no more about it. But the next weekend, while chatting with his son he came to know that the insoles had come off again! And the son, already mortified that papa had had to go to such lengths to get his shoes repaired after having spent a bomb on them, had gone to the local mochi and got the job done!
International companies that spend a fortune to promote their brands, should be willing to change a defective product. In India, Reebok does not seem to have even a proper complaints redressal system. It is not the sole exception. Another journalist, who brought a Compaq Notebook PC on a US visit, wrote about the glaring difference between their after sales service in the US and in India. Clearly, Indian customer service standards are so low that even well-known multinationals let their guard down once they get in.