Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Creative's way of customer support

I bought a Zen Aurvana from Creative, having heard about how "powerful" it is. However after using it for about eight months, this expensive earphone that is supposed to be superb at cancelling ambient noise started to make its own static noise... Since the earphone is still under warranty, I sent it for servicing at the Marina Square branch. Then, the guy behind the counter told me that the servicing will take about 2 weeks.

2 weeks later, I happened to be at Marina Square, so I dropped by to check on my earphone. "Oh, it's not yet ready. We'll sms you once it is ready." said the Creative guy.

Another week later, I did receive a sms from Creative. But it said "Thank you for visiting Creative Care. Your item is still under servicing. We will contact you once its ready for collection. Thank you for your patience."

Another week later (by then one month has passed), I decided to check out my earphone at the Creative main office at Jurong East (yes... all the way there). The Creative guy told me that a replacement earphone will be given to me. However, the shipment has yet to arrive.

"Why can't you just give me one off the shelf since it's a replacement?" I asked.
"Sorry, we can't do that. Please wait for our sms." he said.

Till now, 6 weeks have passed. I finally received a sms from Creative. But it was still "Thank you for visiting Creative Care. Your item is still under servicing. We will contact you once its ready for collection. Thank you for your patience."

Frustrated and in need of a earphone for my coming business trip, I went down to Sennheiser. I found one earphone which performs as good, if not better, than the Zen Aurvana, and cheaper. This time round, before digging my wallet for the earphone, I asked the Sennheiser guy, "How long will it take to service the earphone in the event that it is spoilt?"

"About two weeks. But for earphones, we usually do one-to-one exchange."
"And how long will it take."
"Shouldn't take too long."
"6 weeks?"
"Hahaha... you must be kidding!" the Sennheiser guy laughed.