One time V/s multiple sales

What can a consumer if a company suddenly decides to stop making one of their product lines or worse still stops making the replacement parts?

Now there are two kinds of scenarios –

• one that befell a Daewoo customer when the company went belly up. A major set back back to all the customers who had relied on Daewoo to provide them the service that they had promised in their ads. Only saving grace for customers was that the Indian entrepreneurs were upto the task and companies which were OEM to Daewoo started supplying the spare parts to the open market. The customers had some sliver of hope.


• Second situation arises when a company does some product rationalization, inventory rationalization or basically anything that benefits them, BUT leaves their customers, the same customer which they had wooed, in the lurch. So suddenly you find your possession is a taboo and nobody would be there to help you should you unfortunately feel the need!

Imagine  my plight when I find that my refrigerator’s vegetable tray broke and had to be replaced. Simple task you might say. Call up the company and they will send a replacement!
Easier said than done my friend. I call service agent of whirlpool, they give me number of a dealer in my area. I call the dealer and tell him the model and other details he asks for. He says no problem come and collect in the evening.
I go there and find that instead of a exact replica I get a tray which is smaller. On my insistence that the same will not fit, I am calmly told company has stopped manufacturing that design and hence no pieces available. On further insistence he gives the number of a regional manager of Whirlpool and says, please call him and tell him about the dealer and even bad mouth the dealer!! (Apparently I was not the only one, other people were in same boat and had no vegetable trays to replace!)
So call is duly made to the Regional manager, who listens and puts in on to area manager who again makes notes, both assure no problem it will happen and THEY will contact me. (Afterall they have my number on their mobile!) So then the wait begins, I am told to contact the agent, who will contact me as soon as he receives the piece.
Thank God I did not hold my breath…the wait lasted months. No replacement – it can not come because company is not making, but the sales officials cannot say that, so they keep it is coming, it is coming…summer went, winter coming but not coming any tray!
So after all the follow up what do I do, curse whirlpool, decide not to have any dealing with them, purchase the same available tray which does not fit, is smaller (210L piece for 250L make), leaves gap – so vegetables WILL not stay fresh any longer as Ajay and Kajol show in the advertisement, and wait for time when everything else also stops working so that I can replace the whole damn refrigerator (after all one cannot change the same after 2 years of use!!!)

All this led me to again think of customer service – not there. Customer empathy – completely missing. Customer is a fool – 100% true!!

Companies spend so much on promotions. Not only money but time, creative brains, market research, but simple thing like that when you are selling a product whose usefull life is atleast 5 years if not more (after all you give 7 years guarantee on compressor and all!) can they not put their customer care hat in place and ensure that the spare parts are available.

As I see it considering life span of say 7 years, in my next 40 years I will replace 6 times, influence 25 people against the company, who will in turn influence 15, 10, 5 people. All of these will result in over 530 pieces. As per the two dealers I was pestering there were atleast 10 more customers in same plight – so the numbers become a staggering 5,000 plus and this is only in one locality of Mumbai, across India can this not become become so big to make a Daewoo out of whirlpool
Or is the company under the impression that the customer will fret, scream, but be silent after some noise and when the next time comes, our slick campaign will do the trick?

Guess it is time that companies realize that this is like living in fools paradise. The number of chapter 11 filings in US and the falling of behemoth’s is not that common. Small things can lead to become a tipping point leading to the rise and fall of the companies!

Short term gain can never lead to long term survival

Wake up and smell the coffee!