Tesco Part 3.

Just 20min ago i heard someone knocking on my house door. went down and guess what i saw……

Wong “Cock” Char Chan Teng(Cafe)

Ok, before you squirm at the title, this is not a blog about food. There are already 2.8 million malaysian blogs on food and i never liked or read any one of them. never.

I was forced to go to this place as my wife friends set the meeting place and as you know with all these “HONGKIE” restaurants ( im not a racist and i know a lot of hong kong people dont like to be called hongkie but what should we name you? hong hong? kong tow? ) the service is extremely bad, food is mediocre at best and the price is always high. So im not even gonna waste my time blogging about them but decided to present to you……

Baskin Robbins Part 2

ooooh....scary...

ok ok, maybe the movie poster of the return and baskin robbins is a bit overkill/dramatic.Since i posted the original topic on baskin robbins, my friends asked me ‘why not send an email to them and see how they respond?” so i did juuuuuuuuuuust that on both the US and Msian baskin robbins homepage

B.Robbins Msian feedback page

NOW Accepting User Stories!

*UPDATE- TESCO HAMPER TO BE WON BY BEST STORY SUBMITTED ON READER’S CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE!*

I am now accepting all user’s stories on their customer service experience in malaysia (good and bad)  or elsewhere, so feel free to drop me a mail guys xcarpathia@gmail.com

Also i have made comments open to everyone and not just wordpress members so feel free to drop me a note.

LG Part 2

Lot of LG VIewty owners were anxious to know if i got the new LG Secret replacement phone….well …here it is guys!

I went to LG Msia on Tue to collect the phone at their newly renovated service center. I must say the new look and lighthing overall is a vast improvement. The last time i visited the service center (3 months back) the lights were dim and the walls were barren plus their HUGE PLASMA/LCD TV was also not working. KUDOS to whoever it is who took the charge and made the improvement.

Sony Msia

Recently Sony launched their new bluetooth “walkman” mp3 players. I’ve always love Sony MP3 players as they always provided better earphones and the sound Q is better.

Not only is the new player advertised heavily in the papers, you can also see tons of sony walkman ads even at TGV cinema at 1U!

Attempt #1 at Sony 1 Utama

So 2 weeks ago i went to the SONY retail store at 1utama (new wing) to test the latest SONY Bluetooth Walkman MP3 Players.

The lady seemed puzzled (????) and went to ask for another of her chinese colleague for help. Both of them came to me and asked me again what is the product name i’m looking for. I told them again, i wanted to try out the latest sony bluetooth walkman mp3 players. The chinese lady then replied ” SONY dont make walkmans anymore”.

What can i say? They managed to make me feel like a caveman from 1985 who wanted to buy a TAPE WALKMAN.

ATTEMPT # 2 AT Sony Curve

Few days later, i went to the huge sony store at the curve.

This time around they actually have some units on displays and demo. What a relief i thought to myself!i spoke to this young sales chap and told him i wanted to try the bluetooth headset before i buy. He then replied ” we dont have any bluetooth headset to test”.

ok….. STRIKE # 1

I asked him then can you at least show me the actual bluetooth headset thats bundled with the bluetooth walkman? the guy looked at me like im from some kampung for a few sec before replying, there ISNT a bluetooth headset bundle.This is despite all the heavy promo SONY done and its even in the catalogue in the store itself? (See Pic Below)

The Sony bluetooth walkman mp3 featured in the sony catalogue

the new sony catalogue

The Sony Bluetooth walkman + bluetooth headset package listed right next to the display unit

The Sony Bluetooth walkman + bluetooth headset package listed right next to the display unit

ok….STRIKE # 2

getting a bit annoyed, i told him to check with his colleagues. I then see him discussing with his female colleague and they were walking back and forth in the store itself. 5 min passed and i was happily wandering the store while waiting for them to come back to me. Guess what? the sales guy and his female colleague NEVER CAME BACK TO ME. This was a weekday evening timeframe and you can probably guess the whole sony store only had less than 3 customers including myself. So i was thinking, maybe SONY Msia didnt want to do my business?

STRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE #3!!!!!

needless to say, i left the store empty handed…..only to proceed to the apple store at the curve and got myself an ipod touch instead. Sure, its more expensive but at least i got what i wanted that night- a music player.

Ipod Touch that i bought

Frustrated, i sent an email to sony malaysia through their website. It took them 1 week to reply to me..(see pic

Now, as a customer, the reply came too late ( 1 week) and it didnt really help me nor sony as im not out to WITCH HUNT anyone from sony retail outlet. Is this a lack of training from sony to them or whether they are just not interested to sell SONY products to me, its for them to find out.Also it didnt provide any resolution to my problem as i still wanted to get a bluetooth mp3 player

To be fair, i believe this is just probably a sales training issue. if Sony can spend so much money on promoting the players, beefing up the training for their retailers & staffs.

Feel free to leave a comment.

Tesco Part 2

Well, i finally had time to visit Tesco Damansara yesterday (monday 22nd July) to return the “unpaid merchandise”. I went to the customer service counter next to the entrance and asked the friendly counter lady to see the store manager. She didnt really know who was the store manager and she got me a manager “on duty” instead.

The manager “on duty” Mr Azmi (friendly chap too!) came to meet me and asked how he could help me. I told him that i wanted to return an unpaid item. As i passed the item to him and the receipt to show that i didnt paid for it, Mr Azmi was really STUNNED and CONFUSED. His only question was why the alarm didnt trigger as the security tag was still intact. He asked me this 3 times and i kept tellling him i dont know! He also told me that i was the FIRST and ONLY customer who ever returned an unpaid merchandise to the store!

As i wanted to leave, Mr Azmi thanked me and asked me to leave my contacts with them. I guess Mr Azmi didnt know what to do as this never happened to Tesco Damansara before or maybe he isnt the right person to deal with this case.

almost 1hour plus later as i got home from grocery shopping at tesco, this lady from tesco called me. She asked if i was still at the store and i said no. She then said its ok and then hang up. WHA?????

I guess thats it folks. Its ok for me as i am not really expecting anything in return. I was really more curious as to how TESCO will respond in this case.

So what do you think? leave a comment !

Alam Flora

My parents corner unit house in kajang faces an empty land ( not sure if its private or govt property) and as with any empty land located anywhere in malaysia, people will surely go and discard their rubbish!

Fed up, i emailed Alam Flora late friday night (4th July) and next monday morning itself (7th July) , i got an email reply from them:

I have to say i was very impressed. “NOW THIS IS CUSTOMER SERVICE!” my wife told me and its true. They responded to the customer quickly and also provided a resolution. Not many companies (local or global MNC) can even deliver this level of service and i must give my KUDOS to Alam Flora again.

PICS OF AFTER THE CLEAN UP *UPDATED!*

Still some rubbish around but i believe this is a new batch, thrown by the people here and elsewhere. i wonder if a do not throw rubbish here sign from MPKJ will do any good?

After the cleanup. Most of the rubbish and also furnitured was picked up by alam flora. incidentally there are also some construction going on..hence the yellow muddy road

It is a pity however that alam flora didnt ask me to provide a feedback for their service. i would have written a glowing feedback for them….

Thank you!

Have anyone of you guys ever called alam flora before on cases like this? how was the response? drop me a comment!

LG Malaysia

Early this year i bought the super cool LG Viewty mobile phone. It “WAS” a fantastic phone- touchscreen,plays divx movies& 5MP camera…

….until it started to shut down by itself on me. The thing is, to restart the phone you actually have to take out the battery and reinsert it for it to actually switch ON! This happened almost 3-5 times a week until i finally braved the heavy traffic in kl to fix the phone at the LG distributor service centre ( Hello Station@ plaza berjaya). The whole process took around 3 hours ( update the software from version B to E) and it STILL DIDNT FIX THE PROBLEM! Weeks later, i finally went to LG office + service centre in kelana jaya and they changed the PCB (Printed Circuit Board or mainboard) and it was ok for a while……

And you guessed it right.The problem returned not so often but enough to drive me bonkers! See the embeded you tube link if you want to know what i mean

3 weeks back, i wrote an email to LG Malaysia, asking them for a refund as i have lost confidence in this product and also i have spent too much time and effort getting this phone to the service centre (time, petrol, parking!) . The next day (SPEEDY!) i got a call from the customer service department and i have to say they are very professional in handling my case. The lady in charge ( Ms Azratul) was very emphatic to my situation even though she claims that this is not a common case. I told her that i know for a fact that many users locally are facing the same problem and i am slowly gathering the users from low yat forum (Links to lowyat.net viewty forum) .

As of last week ( 2nd week July 08) , LG Malaysia has agreed to replace my faulty viewty phone with the new LG Secret model.Why you may asked? I have already tried everything to fix the phone (software & hardware) and it still didnt help solve the problem. I suggest all viewty users go through the same process as LG certainly wont offer this to anyone who hasnt tried all possible avenues to fix their phone.

I should be happy you say ? well, i still havent got any updates from LG Msia as to when i can actually do the swap as they cant get hold of a unit for me.

Stay tuned. i will update this post once i get a call from LG Malaysia

Tesco Malaysia

Now this is a  very interesting topic. 2 days ago i was shopping at Tesco Damansara and somehow i managed to checkout with some unpaid merchandise. The unpaid merchandise in question is a box of gillete shaver blades (RM 20 Value).

Of course, i plan on returning this unpaid merchandise the next few days and then it hit me, what and how will those folks at TESCO react/respond? Call in the cops? do a huge PR exercise? give me a RMXXX shopping spree? Well, my wife says that all im gonna get is just a THANK YOU. We will see

so what do you guys think?

ps: I wil update this post once i return the item in question to Tesco. Do come back for updates!

Check out my next post on Sony & LG Malaysia!