I note from a search result within Nokia’s India site, that there are 13 “Nokia Care” centres in Chennai. Is that the best that this giant can do, when they have sold a couple of million phones in this city?

I think it is a shame the Indian consumer is being treated so shabbily by the mobile phone industry in general, and Nokia in particular. The phone makers don’t care about the performance of their devices, the service providers hardly bother about the quality of service while getting very focused on getting their bills paid.

Here is the link to the Nokia search for service in Chennai.

When you see that nice advertisement for a Dell PC for, say, Rs. 29,000, you think, “That’s very good!” Naturally, because consumers the world over have come to view Dell as a PC-maker that provides a quality product, that will run smoothly for years.

I thought so too, until I discovered that Dell doesn’t really care for me (or for others) after they have delivered their order — the boxes with the main unit, the monitor and the keyboard at your doorstep. A relationship with Dell is actually a costly marriage. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a PC from this famous brand is way, way higher than most people imagine when they see those slick advertisements in newspapers and on TV.

I have discovered, for instance, that a Dell PC that costs Rs. 39,000 actually costs just under Rs. 60,000 if you want to keep it for four years with a warranty. I bought a Dimension E520 for that price, compulsorily loaded with Microsoft’s bloatware OS, the Windows Vista Home Premium. My PC was sold with complete cover warranty, but Dell flatly refused to help two months later with installation of a graphics card (PNY Nvidia GE Force 7300 GT) that I purchased (from Best Buy in the US, 2007), because they had not sold it to me (but don’t have on offer anyway). Next, the warranty ran out in one year, and I was now sailing on my own (from May 2008). Just after the warranty period ended, I had to invest in a new optical mouse, because the Dell mouse that came with the PC conked out.

Two years on, and with 2GB of extra RAM added last year, the PC began failing its Power On Self Test (POST). Was it a problem with the RAM ? An intensive test with the different modules yielded no clue. The POST intermittently failed. Sometimes, the PC would boot, and boot again on restart. But it would fail the POST the next time.

I asked Dell for help. Could you revive the warranty? Of course. What would it cost? Rs. 13,757, which includes the “event repair,”  cost of spares extra. “You could actually consider a two-year warranty,” the Dell call centre operator suggested. How much ? Rs. 15,981.

Okay, how much would it cost to fix just this problem ? “We will send an engineer, that will be Rs. 1,354,  just to check the problem. Spares will be extra and you must get them yourself. But then, when he comes again to fit the spares, we will charge another Rs. 1,354,” the Dell staff explained.

Oh. “Yes. That’s why it is better to get the full warranty. If, for argument’s sake, your motherboard then goes faulty, we will replace it free,” he said.

Ok. What does it cost to renew an existing warranty? “That is Rs. 5,208 per year,” Dell said. Does that apply to all your desktops? “Yes. For Optiplex, Vostro and Inspiron models.”

So you quickly understand what it all means. You buy a PC for about Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000 and compulsorily provision not less than Rs. 5,000 per year towards a warranty, because the alternative is to be left adrift in unknown waters. Even with the warranty, the first response from Dell to your call is telephonic support. You must do the work yourself to test your PC, with instructions given over phone by the agent. If that does not resolve the problem, an engineer will be sent.

Also note that Dell has no great love for you when it comes to buying official spares. I wanted to add a memory module, and Dell quoted an astronomical Rs. 6,000 for 1GB of RAM. The market price was Rs. 1,100, and it has now dropped to Rs. 950.

Why was this company praised to the skies by Minister Dayanidhi Maran for setting up a unit in Tamil Nadu, you wonder. To me, it looks like Dell is not really interested in India, in its customers here or in its long-term future in this country. If it were indeed focused on India, the company would have a different approach to service – one that would have trained and employed hundreds of youth to service its PCs, and thus built trust both among consumers and the community. What it does display is Shylock-like greed. And this dimension is never revealed by major newspapers and magazines that keep a discreet silence on consumer issues, while readily purveying PR material as news. One example is this Financial Express story.

There is a CNET article from 2004 that talks about Dell failing to build customer loyalty even in developed markets, because of bad service. Read it here. The situation in the Third World is not difficult to imagine. Now that Dell is retailing through computer and IT stores in India, the situation is bound to take a turn for the worse.

When I think of the Rs. 13,757 quote from Dell for a “break warranty”, I cannot but help consider Roshan Ranka’s offer. Roshan, who can communicate as effectively as any Dell executive can, and I think is as good as their engineers, runs Gurushree Computers in KAJ Plaza, just off Ritchie Street on Chennai’s Anna Salai (Mount Road). Unlike Dell’s people, he is also on Facebook . He offered to build me an Intel Dual Core machine with better specifications than the Dell machine that I have, for Rs. 13,000 (no peripherals, no monitor, but a bigger hard disk, more memory and a graphics card).  Or, I could go to Satvat Infosol, the Chennai IT company that sold me a PIII PC years ago and has always responded to my requests readily. That way, I thought, I would have a PC to spare. Moreover, if there is a problem, I could just walk into KAJ Plaza, rather than deal with a faceless, impersonal, indifferent Dell call centre agent who is keen to sell me a costly warranty (and perhaps pocket a commission), rather than solve my problem. Norton 360 3.0 could substitute for the Dell diagnostics software.

So if you are planning to invest in a personal computer, do check out what the TCO will be for the next four years. Dell is usurious, and not very different from Hewlett Packard that bleeds you mercilessly for ink cartridges. So consider Lenovo, HP/Compaq and so on, which offer as good if not better value for money, and hopefully, after-sales service.

I have just discovered that there is actually a discussion forum that is called “I hate Dell.” Someone has also written about his bad experience here on the Dell Community Forum. Bold decision to have such bad testimonials online – perhaps a commitment to the truth. Giri’s Blog gives this story about why mere branding is no guarantee of quality.
And there is a plausible complaint about Dell service in India here.

While on the subject, it is good to check out Kingston’s page on RAM modules suitable for your Dell PC. Kingston have a search utility by manufacturer and model, for the precise RAM model for your branded PC.  Don’t throw your money away by ordering RAM from Dell, when the OEM manufacturer, Kingston, offers the same thing for a fraction of the price.

TATA’s Croma brand electronic store in Tarapore Towers, located on Chennai’s arterial Anna Road is worth a visit. The gadget-oriented customer is bound to feel happy looking at all the hardware in one place, although the store’s inventory is by no means complete.

It is an interesting place to look at a variety of things, such as televisions, video players, mobile phones, corded and cordless phones, gaming consoles, some peripherals and even keyboards (limited to Casio).

Croma offers some discounts, but the store sits virtually cheek-by-jowl with Chennai’s famous Ritchie Street electronics market. If you don’t mind the jostling and sweaty, pushy ambience of the street, you can get many pieces of hardware and a lot of software for even half the price that Croma sells for.

This is particularly applicable to memory cards, flash drives, recordable media like DVDs and CDs and the like. A sample check showed that the iPod Touch 8GB seemed to be priced about Rs. 1,500 higher than the Chennai street price.

Of course, it is pleasurable to see the hardware stacked up at Croma, with the staff trying to be helpful, but in packaged products, finally, it is price that rules. So if Croma wants to get a larger piece of the action, it must push prices further South. The volumes will help keep costs in control, considering that Croma’s overheads are higher than those of the pigeon-holed shops on Ritchie Street. But that does not explain why a 3 user pack of Norton Internet Security 2009 is cheaper in Ritchie Street, shrink wrapped, at about Rs. 2,600 because that is the price Croma wants for just one licence.

There is also lot of scope for genuine expansion of non-Ritchie Street merchandise in Croma. Hobby electronics needs a big boost in India, and this is the best place to start. Good quality telescopes for stargazing would be one example. How about high performance radios, for another.

Some points to note:

Not all Croma staff are conversant with the latest store pricing. I was billed Rs. 150 more than the actual selling price for a Panasonic cordless phone, because the clerk was not aware of the discounted price. I informed him and he had to generate a second invoice. System integration is still in infancy.

It is welcome that the store staff will open and display package components upon purchase, and do a demo. They also offer an extended 2 year warranty on extra payment, but the warranty service is as yet untested. It is good to ask at the point of purchase for service centre information for all items. The staff oblige.

Now with Reliance Digital also setting up shop across the road in what used to be MECO House, we can watch whether electronics retail is in a really competitive phase.

News of the poor performance of Nokia in the current economic downturn is not surprising. Although it continues to have among the best user interfaces and intuitive phone-use software, the mobile handset major neglected one of its best markets, India.

Cashing in on the poor consumer awareness in the country, Nokia has been peddling handsets with shockingly poor build quality, at a time when its rivals were pushing forward with features and aggressive price points.

Even more distressing is the after-sales support for customers from Nokia in India. We have had occasion to mention before that the plasticky phones sold in India tended to break easily, delivered poor value and ultimately, represented a disappointing experience for value-conscious customers.

Let us see whether Nokia has learnt its lesson, now that it appears like the hare in the mobile race. It must do better with customer support, show greater respect for Indians buying millions of its phones, adopt uniform standards in phone charger integration, audio-jack configuration (3.55 mm) and above all, build quality and support. The carpetbagging days are over. Get down to work now.

The Chairman of the Public Health Foundation of India, Dr. K.Srinath Reddy has written in The Hindu today, another piece on the parlous state of health — this time on medical education in the country. His earlier pieces in the newspaper dealt with the need for the entire Union Cabinet to function as a strong pro-health force.

Now that Dr. Manmohan Singh has undergone a coronary bypass, perhaps he will be more receptive to the concerns of public health advocates and the average citizen, and ask his Finance Minister to sharply raise the public expenditure on health, which currently stands at about 1.3 per cent of GDP (Economic Survey, 2008) or, in Dr. Srinath Reddy’s assessment, 1.1 per cent (pers communication, 2009). Indians spend out-of-pocket to meet nearly 80 per cent of their health expenditure, arguably the highest in the world.

This article in The Hindu deals primarily with health education deficiencies. A quote “Despite effective generic drugs being available, costly brand name drugs are prescribed by the young doctors whose choice is more influenced by what drug industry representatives tell them than by the consideration of a patient’s purchasing capacity”.  A worthwhile read for anyone interested in the issue of health, which is engaging Barack Obama, the UK, China and India. http://bit.ly/dDgmU

The Multi Organ Harvesting Network has been working hard to garner public support for donation of kidneys, heart and liver from brain dead donors.

MOHAN has just released information on the selfless act of the family of Rajaiah, a 48 year old employee of BSNL in Warangal. He met with an accident on the evening of 10th June, while traveling on his two-wheeler near Kakatiya Medical College. As he suffered serious head injury, he was rushed to MGM Hospital, and later shifted to Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences in Secunderabad, where he was on life support system until the night of 11th, when the doctors declared him “Brain Dead”.

Rajaiah’s family was counseled by Dr. Purna and the members agreed to donate his organs. MOHAN Foundation facilitated the process of organ retrieval. On 12th, Rajaiah’s kidneys were retrieved and used for transplant for two patients, and his heart valves were retrieved by doctors from Innova Hospital. They will be used for two patients. Rajaiah, survived by his wife and three children, continues to live on in four people. The family finds solace in the thought that Rajaiah continues to live on in four people.

The UPA needs to deliver on its promises in the core areas of development — free and compulsory education for all, universal healthcare, affordable housing and access to water and sanitation. This article appearing in The Hindu by Dr. K.Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India provides a fine base on which the new government of Manmohan Singh can build. It would be a pity if the special interests in these sectors successfully raise a cacophony of diversionary voices to distract the UPA.

Vikram Kaushik, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, of Tata Sky has apparently spoken to the media in Chennai asserting that Tata Sky would always strive to acquire ‘quality customers’.  He has also said that his service is not interested in the ‘bottom of the pyramid’.

This is a euphemism masking the contempt that Tata Sky has for the vast number of people who bought its service — its self-reported base is 3.7 million customers as on date.  It is also strange business logic, going by the strategy of the mobile phone industry in this country — where bigger subscriber numbers lead to profits.

It would have been interesting to hear what Tata Sky had to say about High Definition broadcasting, which their rivals like Sun Direct DTH have already announced. National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery are seeking permission to beam HD in India, we hear, and it is not clear if Tata Sky will offer them because they have been speaking of lack of capacity on satellites (They don’t have NDTV Hindu yet for that reason, it appears). Hi-Def also requires new STBs, and Tata has lost that advantage to rivals already.

I am a Tata-Sky customer, and it is my experience that they don’t offer all the channels available in the market; they club channels, particularly in sports and films, in such a predatory manner as to ensure that value offerings are not part of their base packages.

The DTH market is very messy right now with no regulatory controls. Now that the TRAI is out of the stranglehold of Ministers-cum-broadcasters-cum-distributors, it should devote itself to regulation of DTH. There can be no delay in introducing a la carte pricing for DTH channels, with regulatory cap on the price of individual channels and controls on anti-competitive behaviour.

It is also difficult to imagine that Prasar Bharti, which launched DTH from Doordarshan, has been banished from the scene. There is no augmentation of the DD DTH platform, on which many broadcasters would be happy to be seen. It is also possible that DD will broadcast HD. It has been kept out of the reckoning by disallowing use of modern technology such as Digital broadcasting, both terrestrial and satellite. AIR is also in a moribund state, unable to use such advancement as Digital Audio Broadcasting. Truly a shameful situation for Indian broadcasting, compared to the progress made by public broadcasters such as the BBC.

This press statement issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists based in New York adds to the feeling of a systematic purge of the media being pursued in Sri Lanka, over the issue of eliminating armed resistance. The LTTE for their part were never in favour of a free press; their enemies in the Sri Lankan government seem to think no differently.

New York, June 1, 2009—The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka today, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb, according to a release by the association and two colleagues who spoke to him.

The attack came on a busy road during rush hour at 5:15 p.m. Jayantha’s colleagues said witnesses at the scene told them six unidentified men in a white Toyota Hi Ace van with tinted glass windows grabbed Jayantha as he was walking home in the well-to-do suburb of Nugegoda. The same type of vehicles have been used to pick up anti-government figures in the past, CPJ research has found.The journalist was left on the side of the road about half an hour later.

Jayantha declined to speak directly with CPJ, but two colleagues who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution told CPJ by phonethat he was beaten with an iron bar and wooden poles—weapons similar to those used in other recent attacks on journalists. Jayantha has a broken ankle and is reportedly severely bruised over much of his body. In an apparent attempt to humiliate him, his abductors shaved the hair on half his head and the other half of his beard. News reports say his injuries are not life-threatening.

”The attack on Poddala Jayantha is part of a trend,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “These attacks are a chilling reminder that journalists remain under attack in Sri Lanka even after the end of the government’s battle with Tamil separatists. We call on authorities to ensure a thorough and immediate investigation into this assault.”

The Associated Press reported that police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said that “authorities don’t know who was behind the attack on Jayantha, who had long accused the government of using threats to silence criticism in the media. No arrests have been made.”

Sri Lankan journalists came under increased attack after the government decided to pursue an all-out victory of the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2006. Despite the end of the country’s decades-long civil war in May, the climate of intimidation has persisted for journalists. During much of the fighting, foreign and local reporters were prohibited by both sides from covering the front line, a policy the government is continuing.

“Another revelation I had was of the widespread corruption in the judiciary. We’re simply not looking at it…” — Dr. Binayak Sen.

Binayak Sen and his wife Ilina addressing a press conference in Kolkata on Friday.

The great Indian middle class, journalists included, never has a serious brush with the law, and therefore cannot fully appreciate what Dr. Sen says. Not surprising that no newspaper bothers to go into this vital aspect of electoral democracy. Can Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi change this shameful dimension of our vaunted democracy?

The UPA Government is set to have a full term from 2009, and it has the opportunity to ensure justice delivery to the masses of this country.

It has to start with implementation of police reforms, which all the States have resisted. The Soli Sorabjee-drafted Model Police Act is still in limbo, so far as the States are concerned. (An earlier draft Act by C.V.Narasimhan is here.)

Accountability and transparency in the lower judiciary, which hears most of the cases, has to be ensured immediately, with penalties and dismissal of judicial officers found to be corrupt. This serious approach will bring sufficient pressure on the High Courts and the Supreme Court also to function as per the letter and spirit of the law and the Constitution.

The appointment of judges has to be painfully transparent. There is nothing wrong in this, since that is the procedure followed even for the US Supreme Court.

Here is the report in The Hindu today (Saturday) on Dr. Binayak Sen’s press conference held in Kolkata after his release from prison in Raipur, on bail.