A worse product backed up by a pathetic service – Godrej Alpina 3 Seater Sofa

#1
This a complaint regarding an ALPINA 3 seater Synthetic leather Sofa I bought in April 2012. It’s just over a year & it is completely spoiled & has become unusable. The stitches have come out from the joints and it had got cracks everywhere & looks as if it’s a 10 year old worn out Sofa. The surprising thing is; I stay alone as I am a bachelor and most of time is spent at my work & I hardly use it in the weekend. And I am 65kg, so not that fat to spoil a sofa. I bought this sofa worth 27000/- & of course expected it to last longer than a year. The sofa started to develop cracks from the 4th month but the cracks were small & were near the stitching area & I never really bothered thinking it won’t worn out because I have blindly trusted the product quality from Godrej as we all have grown up using Godrej Refrigerators / Wardrobes / Washing Machines ever since we were kids at our homes. But over the last 9 months it has become unusable & looks really bad. It’s not only the stitching part but the other parts started to show cracks too [Arm rest & back rest]. I believe it is a manufacturing defect. While I understand that this product is warranted only for one year, I would like to tell you that the cracks won’t develop in a day or a month, it’s there from the 4th month of buying the product. I was out of India for couple of months & my home was locked & there was no one at my home to log a complaint while the product was in warranty.

Please refer to the pics for more about the worst quality & defective product.

I can accept that at times even with a strict Quality Control mechanism it is very much possible to get a defective unit, however what happened after I called the customer care is completely unacceptable & is a mystery. I am still waiting to hear from them as to what they have to offer as a solution since my first contact to customer care in June/July 2013. I contacted customer care first in July & a lady named “Shilpa” responded saying some manager named “Naresh” from the Hyderabad area would contact me. It took him his own sweet time to get back to me. Almost after a month & after multiple calls & SMSs finally someone visited my house [Naresh Promised he will physically examine the sofa but he sent some worker instead] & the report came out as “there is no manufacturing defect”. I really had to chase hard this time & if I pull up my call records that goes unanswered I would have called Mr. Naresh at least 500 times [literally] if not more. He won’t answer or respond to my texts. He would answer if I call him from my office landline because he does not know it’s me & if you think I was ever rude to him then that’s not true, I was extremely polite to him every time we conversed. I dint hear back from him about the procedure to repair & how much would it cost for the repairing if not for free.

This is a summary of my experience with such a renowned brand “Godrej” & the customer service in last 6 months. I hope the management would take some action here to bring my faith back in Godrej Products & service. I would continue to highlight this in various forums until I get a solution to this.

I also have a 3 door Kreation wardrobe which I bought before 6 months & I started to worry about the quality of that one too.

Name : Srikanta Dora

Email : skdora@gmail.com

Dealer I bought :
Godrej Interio Store
Plot no: 6,
Opp axis bank, Gachibowli
Hyderabad - 500032
Andhra Pradesh
 

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#2
Godrej responded & repaired my sofa for free which really is appreciable. Thank you Mr. Naresh & Mr. Sanyal for their professional gesture & bringing my faith back in the Godrej Brand. I believe its more of a lower management issue than Godrej as a brand. The moment things were escalated to upper management they fixed it for free within a week's time without any second thoughts, hats off to the senior management / service dept. Thank you again folks.
 

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