Dear Editor,
“Re-fill your cartridges at the most economical rate" screams the promotions of Re-Feel via its franchise Akanksha Enterprises situated in Galleria Shopping Center- Hiranandani Gardens, Powai. Lokesh the owner was very polite when he 1st visited our home to convince us of the benefits of refilling printer cartridges, what he didn't however disclose is that these cartridges would have less than 30% of life than an original HP cartridge, would not deliver the same sharpness and colour brightness in printing of documents as compared to the original ones and worst the cartridges would leak and spoil the expensive HP 4-in-One printer at an MRP of Rs. 12,500!!!
The 4 refill bills (the original HP cartridges last more than a year) between June'09 to October '09 substantiate our claim of "Short Re-Feel Cartridge Life", despite the fact that the usage on our 2 year printer has been constant, what really busted the Akanksha Enterprises' hollow claims of “Green technology” and "Good & Prompt Service" was when the Re-Feel black cartridge leaked massively, spilling black ink on the printer heads causing havoc to my expensive HP 4-in-One printer which stopped its printing function.
Repeated calls to rectify this problem only ensured that the owner Lokesh reluctantly sent a delivery boy to "inspect" the damage, who using a scrap paper tried cleaning the printer head. I was appalled at this callous and unprofessional handling of such an expensive piece of equipment and asked them to send in their professional technician with requisite know how and proper cleaning solvent to clean the mess (Its Green technology- remember!!!) which had rendered the printing function useless.
No response from them for about 10 days, as Lokesh the owner kept dodging our calls and finally when confronted he rudely dismissed all responsibility of Re-Feel cartridge quality and even went to the extent of putting the blame of built quality squarely on the $ 110 billion dollar company HP (Hewlett Packard) for the alleged malfunction.
All this in the face of their claims of “Just Original” and “Green” (supposedly environment friendly technology), which has left us with no other option to have our printer professionally serviced by HP technicians adding to already high cost of operation due to the Re-Feel cartridge and not to mention the inconvenience and the frustration of being duped given the lax and lengthy Consumer rights movement in our country.
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When PP spoke to the Store Manager of Re-feel on this issue he told, “Mr Pherwani has been using our services for a while. He was quite happy till recently. We agreed to all his complaints till recently. Once he came to us with a complaint and the same was responded to immediately, after sometime he again came back with another complaint with another cartridge. The same was beyond repair as it well past its shelf life. As we are customer friendly we gave him a credit slip for the refilling charges of the earlier cartridge though we were not liable to do so. He came back to us after few days saying there was a leakage in the printer and asked us to clean the same which we did though it was not our job. We also advised him that his printer needs repair. He did not heed to our advice. Again after few days he asked us to get his printer cleaned which we refused as we cannot be doing something which is not part of our business. If he does not want to use our services we are ok and he can come with the credit slip and get it encashed. We would like to emphasize that customer service is our key but not when somebody becomes unreasonable.”