On 29th March, the refund of my Rediff Scam money was completed. A 30+ Days refund period??
Last week, I got a call from Ms. Minal Joshi who was talking about me enrolling as a Business associate with Rediff and selling their products. I think I did enroll for their program without my knowledge, thanks to the very user friendly interface. Yea, I am still sore about loosing my domain. A mistake I will regret all my life.
I initially talked to her about the scam experience I had with Rediff as a customer and cannot really imagine if I sell the same level of service to my clients as their reseller. She was pretty warm and understanding and I forwarded the email correspondence I had with them and this blog post link on rediff hosting.
She promised that she will tell the people concerned about this and try to get the domain back for me. I was really impressed with the way she talked and the way she took the initiative to clean up her company’s mess. Hats off to Ms. Minal Joshi for that. If you are a part of the company, give her a raise, she deserves it!
The same evening I got a call from Melvin, whose position in the domain I am not sure about. He was telling me about how sorry he is about me loosing a domain and all that. According to him, the reason why I lost the domain was that I had booked with my ICICI account and the other person reportedly booked it with his credit card. And since a bank payment requires 24 hrs to approve and credit card payments get approved quickly, he was able to take the domain home in all glory.
To clean up the mess, he promised me a free domain of my choice which I declined since I have a ton of domains myself and getting another domain is not a solution. I was happy to at least hear from them about the same. But the mess is still there. I was tempted to remove my earlier rediff web hosting post, but now it stays for the time being, indexed well for terms like “rediff hosting”, “rediff domains” and more rediff terms.
It takes some gut to clean up the mess you created. Trust me, I have done it almost successfully for more than 8 months.
I used to work in the Retention Team in Cochin with Airtel where my job was to bring in customers leaving us due to service issues and more. But I always made sure I cleaned up the mess left by Sales, Billing, Customer Service or anyone else. It was great job satisfaction to see a customer smile after you solve his problems. Something which gave me a high, to be able to change the way a customer looks at the company, Airtel. I still meet up random people who remember as the “Airtel Guy” who helped them, and tell me I am the reason they still use Airtel.
Engadget shares this photo of an xBox 360 signed by the entire xBox team (and Bill Gates). Way better than an impersonal letter apologizing for mishandling a computer that was sent in for repair.
As Seth Godin said, “Do you know what most people want? They want you to care.” Here is a copy of the final email I sent them:
My overall experience with Rediff hosting has been so far nothing but a waste of time and a domain name. I will definitely try my best and let people know about the same.
http://whois.domaintools.com/anands.in
I was told that this domain was available on the 15th and hence I had booked the same and 2 days later you send me a email that the payment has been approved and to login to my control panel and do whatever with my domain.
I login and find that the domain is no where to be found in my control panel. I email you guys about it and you tell me that the domain is already booked by someone else.
Someone from the rediff registers the domain on the exact same date and tell me its already taken? Great customer service you got there. Clients search for goods names and you register them and park it around. How serious are you about staying in the business?
You can seriously look forward to bad press from my side to the best of my capacity as a authoritative blogger and marketer.
P.S: Please do the refund without any hiccups to avoid making yourself look totally unprofessional to deal with.
Thanks,
Anand
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