I have had one of the most eye opening experiences of my life interacting with
Eldeco marketing.
Eldeco has a number of projects in the
NCR - Delhi region and I expected
Eldeco staff to be customer friendly.
Eldeco is a listed company, and one kind of assumes that the marketing department will be smart and savvy. However, they are savvy and smart, but only for their own good, is what I realized once I had paid the booking amount and legally agreed to buy the flat ( or else
forefeit the booking amount).
We did not want wooden flooring in any of the bedrooms, as we were not sure how it would work out in Indian conditions. Before booking, we were told by their sales person, that these are small and minor things, to be taken care of once we make up our mind about the flat. "You are paying for the flat, so what issue can the company have in extending the marble flooring of the drawing area to your bedrooms, especially when cost of both wooden and marble turns out same to the company. We are here to serve you mam". Of course, how simple it seemed. Alas, the story changed completely as soon as the booking got done.
"We surely cant change our flats for each single customer. Else the project will never get delivered. Customizations are not possible. You are however free to change the flooring of the flat once you get the possession."
Of course at our own cost.
Eldeco will not even give us rooms without any flooring and just reduce our time, effort and money of first removing their stuff and then replacing it with ours. Needless to say, the wooden flooring is rustling under my feet, maintenance is a big pain in the dusty areas of
Noida and all complaints about the
peel offs lead to no result.
Possession was to be given to us in April, but we got it only in August last week, and that too after a lot of hassles. Eventually, we had to agree to broken marble pieces in the drawing room, undulated walls and all kinds of poor construction issues, as we needed the possession of the flat to start our own woodwork. When we asked
Eldeco authorities to change the marble pieces that were broken, they told us that this could happen anytime, what would we do if the pieces broke after we took possession. They were not ready to change the marble, and if we insisted, they would replace it, but they would not make sure to match the replaced piece with the surrounding pattern. We gave up.
Similarly for the front door. The margin of the front door was badly cracked. It took us almost 5 meetings with
Eldeco staff to get them to agree to change it.
Registration was another harrowing experience. We paid up the registration amount in first week of May. It took
Eldeco about 5-6 months to get ready for the registration. We really hated the fact that they sat on our money all the while, refusing to listen to any pleas for getting the registration done. With a floating rate home saver loan account, it would have really
benefitted us to get our registration amount and pay it only when they really wanted to do the paper work. Another case of complete customer apathy.
For the registration, we agreed to a date and time. Unfortunately, my daughter got down with measles. She was about 7 months at that time, and it was risky to take her to the crowded registrar office of
NOIDA. I requested the
Eldeco authorities to give us another date. It was something we really wanted to avoid, as registration was something which we wanted to get done as fast as possible. However, given
Nandini's condition, there was no choice. But, their point of contact was not ready to budge. He told us that the date of the registration had been printed in advance on the stamp papers, and the stamp papers can not be changed. Or, if we agreed to pay the stamp duty again - some 5.5
lakhs, maybe it can be done. If the date is printed once, it cant be changed. I knew this was just his way of resisting our change request, so I requested again. Surely, if the date is printed and the person meets with an accident, will s/he need to get the papers printed again? The
Noida authorities, for all their
bureaucracy, can not be that foolish. After umpteen calls,
Eldeco relented. Surely, when we went for the registration, we found that no date is even printed.
Thanks Mr
Pankaj Bajaj, honorary managing director of
Eldeco, for choosing
such brilliant customer service representatives. Surely it is flowing from the top,
isnt it?
Labels: ananda, apartment, construction, Eldeco, flat, housing, properties