Refund of Rs 15,999/- for non delivery of king size bed

This independence day, I went and purchased a double bed from hometown outlet in bangalore central jayanagar.On Aug 14 2010, I selected and paid money (in cash)for a king size double bed worth Rs 15,999/- from them and was given an advance receipt which stated delivery on 28th August 2010.I asked the salesman whether the date of delivery was a confirmed date and he told me "Sir we are HomeTown and not any small shop and the date we commit is pukka".



Come August 28 , we were waiting at home with the hope of having our bed delivered, thats when the whole attitude of hometown's customer care got revealed to us.When ,we did not get any call from hometown , my wife called up the customer care of hometown Bangalore central and asked them about the status of our delivery.The girl who picked up the phone checked with her other staff and gave us a reply that she would check and get back in 20 minutes.When there was no callback from the customer service even after 30 minutes, my wife called her back and again reminded her about delivery of the bed.To this the customer service representative replied "Madam , didn't I tell you that I would call back.Why are you calling us" .My wife explained that she did not get the call back even when it was more than 30 minutes past her last discussion.To this the representative replied "Madam I attended 50 to 60 calls after your call and was busy and hence I was not able to call you.Your bed is stuck at customs on Maharshatra-karnataka border.It will take further 2-3 days and we wil not be able to deliver it today".



After this not so pleasant experience with the customer service representative, we went personally to the Hometown outlet and enquired about the delivery status.I asked for a refund of my amount from the customer service manager (Mr Khan) .He said that he cannot refund the money in cash (even when we had made payment in cash) and that he can give it in cheque and that too after getting approval form Mumbai office which would again take upto 6 days.he promised delivery on Mon 30th August instead.



The callous attitude continued on 30th August, this time again, they did not bother to call us.When we called up , this time the excuse given was "Sir the bed was despatched , but the truck met with an accident".Again the same story , we will deliver in 2-3 days.When we called back after 2 days, this time again we are told by Mr Khan that he will need another 2-3 days to get the status.Finally , fed up with their constant excuses and since by then we had already sold our old bed, we decided it was enough and asked for starting to proceed with refund.We told Mr Khan that we are now stuck up w\o bed as we had paid Hometown Rs 15,999/- and without any assurance of either delivery or refund , we are finding it difficult to even go ahead with another vendor, fearing that if we go ahead and buy a bed from somewhere else, HomeTown might again surprise us by saying that they are going to deliver the bed.To this Mr Khan assured us that our order is cancelled and they will be refunding us the money by cheque.



Now, I have still not got a date from Mr Khan regarding when I will get my money back.Its already been 5 days since I was told that i will get refund.Just to add to this , i purchased almost a similar bed from a vendor close to my house for Rs 17,000/- on Sat Sep 04 and got the bed delivered from this other vendor on the very same day, whereas I am still to hear back from Hometown regarding refund of my money paid in cash.



The advance receipt of hometown states that any amount greater than Rs 20,000/- will be paid in cheque.When i pointed this out , I was told that there is a change in policy in HomeTown and they will pay in cheque for any amount even if it is only Rs 1,000/-.



FYI - Even Ebona from Mumbai office has asked Mr Khan to go ahead and process the refund.



HomeTown is a dubious place to deal with and has caused me and my family unneceassary stress and inconvenience and left in bad taste of being duped by so called reputed outlet.


-Distressed customer
Vishal

I went to HomeTown to ask proof regarding the initiation of my refund of Rs 15,999/- .Except one person ( I pity this guy because I don't know what he is doing among this bunch of jokers in the name of salesman and customer service staff) everyone else is either rude or busy in taking the customer for a ride.
There was this one guy who has the nerve to tell me that they are not doing a favour and how big HomeTown is that people like me come there to shop.I told him that after my bad experience neither me nor at least 100 people who know me will not come to shop at HomeTown.To this he replied "We don't care if 100 people don't buy from here"

After all this , I got a cal again from HomeTown staff stating that I can come and collect cash as refund.
When I returned to take the money , I asked them how come they are now giving me cash when earlier the same people (Mr Khan) had said that even Rs 1000/- cannot be given by cash but has to be given by cheque that too after approval from Mumbai office.

To this , this gentle man ( the only proper customer service guy I mentioned above) replied that "I don't know what Mr Khan said , we do give cash refund"

I have now got my money back, but left really bitter after this experience and left wondering how HomeTown can get away with this attitude day in day out.