Monday, March 24, 2008

Reliance Fresh doesn't believe in Customer Care.

3 bananas, 2 oranges, 1 mango and 1 bunch of grapes. No, I am not going to give a maths question where given the price of each of them, you have to tell my total expense. The sophesticated machines at Reliance Fresh outlets can do that easily and much more!

That is how my fruits and vegetables shopping list generally reads.

Reliance Fresh was blessing in disguise of a store when it opened. The quality of fruits and vegetables was amazing! So fresh, so photo-like! I was happily surprised. It made shopping for groceries and fruits and vegetables not only convenient but also a fun activity.

But it didn't last that long. The store started filling up with general items and fruits and vegetables started taking the backseat. Mostly I buy tomatoes and they were no longer fresh or photo-like but rotten or raw! Carrots were in pathetic shape as well. But I didn't complain, though muttered silently.

Things had deteriorated. You didn't get the freebees if you didn't demand!

Lately they started a scheme where you get sprouts or cut vegetables at 50% off (so that they rot in your kitchen not at their store!). One day I found stuff that was past its Best-Before date. I complained and it was removed from the shelf, but that was not the last time it happened. After that also I found sprouts and vegetables past their usable date.

But the worse was yet to come. My friend found fungus on cut sugarcane which was not even past the Best Before date. He went to return that and complained to the customer care person.The stuff was returned but he was bluntly told that if had problems better he should not purchase from the store. His threats of complaining were blunted with 'do whatever you want to'.


But he could not complain. Because there is no where you can lodge a complaint.

Can you believe Reliance Fresh doesn't have a website of it's own? Or for that matter Ranger Farms? or Reliance Retail? They don't have a customer care email id where you can send in your feedback. You search on internet and you get just a marketing page about Reliance Retail or some unofficial pages about Reliance Fresh.

This is unacceptable and unbelievable that there is almost no emphasis on customer care. I hope Bharti-Walmart and Aditya Birla Group's more will change this scenario and if Reliance does not care for us then may be we too should care a damn for them.

Technorati Tags: , ,

8 comments:

Vaibhav Choudhary said...

Yes this is true. In all the retail, Reliance retail sucks the most. The vegetable and fruits quality I have seen when I came last time to Hyderabad. I surprised the way they manage counters. One guy counts his change money after every transaction. There is no separate counter for <100,200 Rs buyers. Everything is full of stupidity. And the guys working there, don't want to work, pretty much clear from his/her behavior.

Reliance is one of the leading business in our country but regret to say it do a crap business all the way and there is nothing called customer-care.

Neha said...

Ya...it really sucks to hear that...well I haven't been to reliance fresh...but I have been to Subhiksha and that seems fine...
But nothing to beat our small time vegetable fruit seller or the grocery store owner...if you are a regular customer, you are sure you'll never get cheated, they will also give you some discounts/ special offers, they will sell you the best fruits/vegetables/raashan, will take back whatever you didn't like and would even ask their 'chotu' to go and leave your purchase to you house or car...I guess you should go back to buying the old way Abhishek, these retail chains are still a long way from 'this' kind of customer service :))

Anonymous said...

The best place to buy vegetables and fruits in the local vegetable wala where he always gets fresh stuff and takes active part in understanding our needs !!
And about Reliance - Nothing lasts forever.Even reliance is getting a tough compitition with other retain places.The trick is to stick to the old local walas =)

Waterfox said...

Neha, Priya I had actually written about the fact that there would be a spillover to small retailers and vendors from these big organized retailers. But I had thought that would be due to rush at these stores not due to lack of quality!

Vaibhav, I don't know but most of this blog's readers have told me that the same bad service is prevailing everywhere!

Now how to make it audible to Ambani bhai!

Yogee said...

Still they are able to fool the people. I have same kind of experience with FoodWorld. They sell rotten foods at very high rates.
And when we talk about reliance in general, it has become a leeching monster which cannot be controlled. In each and everything, they have very bad repo as they cheats people. Personally, I always stay away from 'Reliance' tag.

Col Suresh Bagga said...

Relience fresh has no Customer Service. Behavior of store managers and employees is such that they dont want customers in their store. Well they get paid for that. To add to this, rotten and stale vegitables they sell also helps to keep the customers away.

Top management seems to be in deep slumber, they do not know what is happening under them.

Shameful people, top managers, managers and lower rung employees.

Akash said...

Yes, Reliance fresh doesn't believe in customer service at all. Every time I visit have, I get worse experience: be it displayed item, billing, or any other thing.

Raj said...

In my opinion we should boycott this company and brand. These two brothers are sucking our blood like this way and carrying richest person's tag.
Enough now.... Every Indian should take little pain to visit alternate place and make awareness to Boycott Reliance...