Month: October 2023

Unethical Business practices

/ nagwamalik / Leave a comment

You know your country has gone to the dogs when even companies that used to follow the rules and policies of their parent companies abroad to maintain their customers deicide to shed it: stormfiber is a latest example of deterioration of high standards or even basic standards with regards to product quality and maintenance and especially customer service.
Where stormfiber was known for its prompt resolution and response rate, now this whole year especially, its quality of service has deteriorated markedly. Not only have they been ignoring complaints by responding with a generic email “we have found your connectivity to be in optimal condition” but even when they do acknowledge an issue and register a complaint telling you a visit has been assigned within 24 hours, no one comes…forget coming, no one even bothers to call to confirm if they are coming or not.
The most recent of this behaviour was when it took me 3 whole months of complaints with regards to the TV no signal issue…after which I was asked to expect a visit: got no visit and no follow up call, but I had to lodge a 4th complaint after another month as the issue persisted and got a visit last week.
Now, hardly a week later and the whole caboodle has gone to hell wherein the TV, the net, everything is out of service due to a fibre breakage or damage issue.
The real issue here is
1. Stormfiber had already detected the issue and the possible reason behind the issue (which I got in the form of a recorded message after I called them to place the complaint stating “a fibre related connectivity issue has been detected” and giving me an option to lodge a complaint against said issue), so why didn’t they dispatch someone already to check the issue?
2. If they have a company policy not to dispatch a team to verify a disconnectivity picked up by their own system, and to wait for the customer to file a complaint, then why the delay especially when the complaint was filed within 2 hours of the detection? 11am is when they claim to dispatch their teams (now they claim teams are dispatched at 10am, every single person in the tech team gives you a different information). They even claimed they had multiple teams already present in my area, as they have multiple teams deployed in all the areas. I lodged a complaint at 11 am and no one came. I called a total of 6 times throughout the day and was constantly lied to that a team was already in the area and they will call me back and verify an eta. I was even asked to wait till 10pm (do they think we’re fools? These people do a runner at 5 when their time is till 6pm). We all know nobody comes after 5-6pm. Despite my repeated requests no one called me from the field team to acknowledge the request and give me a time. They claimed they had put the complaint on a priority basis.
Is this how service industries are now going to behave towards their clients? Increasing their payments and degrading their service quality? Will this be the norm of international companies and multinational companies and ISPs and digital platforms and even physical platforms? Why? Because it’s not their own country where they need to follow the rules and regulations?
This is a huge problem the world faces: brands and companies having two-faced policies: keeping up high standards in some countries and discarding ethics and rules and standards and quality of products and services in others.
This is a problem I have been highlighting for quite sometime now. Why should one opt for a brand, especially an international one, when their product and service quality is as subpar or even worse than the local market or lesser known brands? It’s a wastage of money. (If this were my local cable operator I’d have marched up to him and he’d have sent someone right along with me on the spot. So much for stormfiber’s “within 24 hrs”!)
Like how people have complained about little to no customer service of samsung, kenwood, Canon and Sony in Pakistan. Why should people opt for these brands when they get no real customer support or after sales service? It’s not worth it.
So why should one continue to use Cybernet aka Stormfiber when it is no longer worth it? I have spent 24 hours without services: net, TV and customer. In these 24 hours I have suffered loss as my work is online, my solar system is off line and thus unmonitored for 24 hours (stormfiber can check the time stamp of skyelectric sending me an alert AFTER 24 hours at 9:42am this morning), and I have had to put all my work on hold, not to mention thanks to having the same provider for TV cable, I have no TV service either for 24 hours. And no one had the decency to call me back. No one. And this is an ISP that charges it’s clients a monthly fee in advance. If they expect their clients to pay in advance and on time, don’t they have a duty to resolve any and all issues on time too? If they think it is okay to ignore such a big issue of total disruption of all services, then perhaps it is okay for their clients to not pay them either. We are paying for services, not to be ignored while we suffer losses due to zero services rendered. We pay in advance so we expect the ISP to be on top of things and fix issues on time too.
It is highly unethical, unprofessional and inept of service providers to fail to provide services, which is what they are getting paid for…and without an apology or compensation. This lax attitude will cost you clients, as it did ptcl.
The fact that this year stormfiber customer service deteriorated so much that it can be declared to have failed miserably is something stormfiber should take very seriously and look into. Incompetence and lax attitude towards clients who are not getting what they have paid for, with stormfiber increasing its bill, will lead to rather disastrous results for the ISP. For all their harping about their policy to resolve an issue within 24 hours…24 hours have already passed and not even a call from the field team or manager or head office, and no sight of anyone either.
Failure to deliver on all fronts is a sign of a failing company. Should we be concerned about the potential shut down of stormfiber? Why else would it fail in resolution of issues? Or does an ISP believe that its product, network connectivity is not an urgent or important matter in today’s world where almost all businesses are online? That is an oxymoron: an ISP doesn’t consider a total disconnectivity of network an urgent matter to be dealt with within working hours?!
Amazing. I wonder if this is acceptable in their parent company’s country?
In a country where a parcel delivery is made in 2 hours, when they say “we deliver on the same day” and you can time your watch by the arrival of the milkman, other companies who claim to be big brands cannot even get their job done within a time frame. Does #stormfiber know the meaning of #within24hrs ? (I teach English, you know…should I teach you what “within” means?) Because they have never resolved an issue within 24 hours: it has always been within 3-6 months or at the very least AFTER 24 hours. 24 hours technically passed at 9am re the breaking down of connectivity, whereas at 11am 24hrs had passed since registration of complaint, and what does the tech CSR say to me today at 9am? That is has been 21 hrs since my complaint. Meaning, they have just kidnapped a whole hour. Is this how you count? Seriously? Is this how stormfiber does simple math? A complaint is lodged at 11am, you get an sms confirmation at 11:13am and your helpline counts the hour from 12 and insists at 11am the next day that 24 hours haven’t passed? 9am is 21 hours? And when are the team expected to come? After 11, by 12 noon. This is what stormfiber and all such businesses call #within24hrs. (Calling out mobilink: the biggest thief and WORST customer service ever, forcing clients to take up packages against their will and then ripping them off when they revert back, never letting balance remain in the account: in 24 hours all your balance goes to zero. And they never help you get your own money back if they find unnatural, unpermitted movement of your money in their virtual bank/micro finance…funniest of all they can’t reach their own customers over the phone, citing inability to connect; if that doesnt tell you the status of their network I don’t know what does.)  Amazing isn’t it? And people wonder why Pakistan is where it is today.
Maybe I should refuse to pay stormfiber its advance bill…it is my policy to not pay for anything until after I use it to ensure it works. How about that? Why should I pay in advance for a badly maintained, fault-ridden product that not only malfunctions but causes me loss and there is no timely resolution?
Suffice it to say stormfiber has colossally failed to deliver on its “within24hour” policy yet again. 25 hours have passed as I type this and not a call, not a single call, and no visit. Is it because they don’t give a damn about the customer? Or is it because there is no team, and stormfiber is lying to it clients, when it actually lacks manpower? Or is it because their own team is responsible for this disconnectivity that it fails to appear and fix it? Why the dead silence even after 25 hours? Or is the public once again suffering at the hands of employee vs management conflict?
The team states upon arrival that they never got the complaint until 11am this morning after 24 hours had already passed.
This is also something i have been going through for a while: the helpline swearing they have it on the record that the team has received the complaint, and the team showing me their record of having received the complaint just 1 hour before arrival.
Let us get one thing straight: the public doesn’t give an Effing thing about your reasons: all the public knows is that it has paid, and paid more, with increased taxes, and got zero delivery, with no apology and no compensation. And the public doesn’t stay with those who fail to deliver after taking their money.
In Islam the fundamentals are 1. Punctuality 2. Honesty 3. Fulfillment of promises 4. Give what you’re paid for
5. No khyanat
And not a single one of these fundamentals are followed. The Western countries have made these Islamic fundamentals their own, but we, self-claimed Muslims have disregarded them. Kudos to the shamelessness and utter lack of principles,  ethics, morality and honesty on the part of all businesseses and service industries in our country. No wonder none of you last long.
#dishonestyinbusiness #disregardforclientsaftergettingpaid #aftersalessupport #ISPdismissesurgencyofbeingofflineformorethan24hrs #stormfiberthinkshavingnoserviceforover24hrsnoturgent #oxymoron #Pakistan #callingoutthehypocriticalpoliciesofinrernationalcompanies #cybernetdisregardscustomers #consumerlaws #shariah #businessethics #violationofgoodfaith #violationofconsumerrights #disregardforthelaw #stormfiberfailstodeliveroncompanypolicyofwithin24hrsresolution

More Missing Persons Appear On The Series Of Forced Interviews Amidst Torture (podcast)

/ nagwamalik / Leave a comment

Two new interviews are lined up of missing persons: these interviews were recorded Amidst heavy torture and assaults. A little more on the inside details and how the establishment is gaining the wrath of the public and what the US is doing to enable the destruction of Pakistan’s sovereignty. These interviews are being recorded and aired for the benefit of USA and UK establishments at the risk of incurring Pakistanis’ wrath in what is already a harrowing situation.

Why Junaid Safdar Has No Right To Privacy Re His Divorce (podcast)

/ nagwamalik / Leave a comment

I’ll be blunt and explain why and how Maryam Nawaz’s son has no right to appeal for a respect of his privacy: and why the media, the journalists and the citizens are disregarding this appeal taking off full fledged on dissecting his married life and divorce. And you will notice many others making the same points showing how we all feel regarding this whole situation.

Old is Gold But Darned Confusing…Like My 37 Year Old Automatic Washing Machine

/ nagwamalik / Leave a comment

So, it all started when our new washing machine had a problem and my dad, like everyone of his generation, suddenly decided NOT to call the company to repair the very tiny fault, and insisted on sending it to the local electrician who in turn did something to the lock mechanism of the washer so that water drained. To fix that he again sent it to the same people who ended up breaking the lid, and again he sent it back to them as the fault of drainage remained and they burnt the motor of the spinner….sent again to replace the bearings and they used our machine as a base to drill something, making a hole on the body of our machine…each time my dad paid them. This is how stubborn the boomers are…and interestingly they are always obstinate over the wrong thing and when they should be obstinate they back down.

And because of that I got so pissed as I even had to go through electrocution thanks to their incompetence. And this machine has a 10 year warranty with the company. But I doubt the company will touch it any more. And this is why I loathe my desi people: they don’t know anything but earn money doing work they have no clue about whereas qualified people don’t get work and don’t get paid. This is a very broad stroke reason as to why Pakistan is effed up today and has no future.

But this whole ordeal is the background to why we had to bring out our 37 year old bompani fully automatic washing machine and set it up again. Why did we remove it in the first place? When we shifted to Pakistan in the 90s we brought this machine with us and my mum used it,but after a few years they removed it and bought a small washing machine of a local brand because the bompani machine used a LOT of power…electricity which as we all know is always a huge problem in Pakistan, India etc. Now, after 20 odd years we got it up and running but both my parents have forgotten how to use it and which setting is the best and shortest etc. So, like with everything else, after spoiling things for me, now they want me to take charge: to figure things out. The story of my life: always fixing problems caused by others. Now, although the electrician who set it up helped us figure out how to start it, because it was already set to whatever settings they used, we did a trial running: electricians do a trial run to see that the machine is working. So he left it on and asked us to see it’s cycle time etc. Right! 3 hours passed and it kept spinning. I got tired and just shut it off. Meanwhile the other machine was fixed…temporarily because now again all the water drains and I have to use the old machine the timing of which I can never figure out. The 1st time it took 3 hours, I think. Then it took 3 hours but still kept running until I turned it off, then it took 2 hours (small load, at cold wash 30 degrees…old machines have minimum 30 degrees) and last week 3 hours had passed but it was still washing (the setting was on little dirty at 50 degrees temp). I shut it off and let the water out manually. And again yesterday I let it run for 4 hours (almost full load, cold wash 40 degrees) and again got fed up and turned it off and removed the water manually and dumped the load into the other machine to serve as a rinser since it was draining water anyway. And bompani has NO CLUE about anything. The only thing they could tell me was how to reset it. But how much time it takes, the cycles, the settings…Nada! So much for contacting bompani.

Now if anyone still has this machine or knows anything about it, I’ll welcome some pertinent information. I am tired of my life always being to figure out things others fuck up or don’t know…why me, I wonder? Why does everyone want me to fix their shit? And WHY are we still struggling with laundry in today’s age?

Before I get a new machine, can any one help me here with load time etc? FYI, I tried cold wash and little dirty settings and both have done all the above mentioned time hoops. Don’t tell me medium to full load means 5-6 hours?! Light load is 2 hours and medium is 3.5hours?

I’m all over the place: this is a front load fully automatic machine mod.2762. HELP! Anyone?!

Me saying “dude!?” After 3.5hours passed and it was still washing…hadn’t even begun rinsing. Still WASHING.