New Delhi
May 19, 2008

In view of the after-sales service and support being offered by APC, dealers across the country are refraining from selling APC products. While some APC partners have shifted their focus towards selling other brands yet others are reducing the volumes of APC products they used to sell.

According to partners, the after-sales support services are worsening every day. It has reached the point where they have been forced to reduce their focus on selling APC.

Satpal Singh of Chandigarh-based DS Data Spec mentioned, “The service condition has surely gone down. It has now been more than a year and the services have not improved. We did talk to APC officials in person, but there has been no developments thereafter.”

He further stated the company has come out with a new policy wherein in case of dead on arrival (DoA) or replacement issues, an APC person will first check the condition of the equipment and after thorough inspection replace it. But the problem with this new policy is that most of the times APC officials are busy and the issue goes unnoticed or the procedure gets delayed leaving dealers in a lurch.

Vinod Verma of Key Computers, Nagpur said, “The after-sales services from APC's end has certainly deteriorated. Anytime a service issue is logged it takes three to four days to sort out the issue, whereas the company policy states that issues are to be sorted out within 48 hours. However, when we brought the issue to their notice they only assured us, but there has been no respite.”

Deepak Vidhani from Chhattisgarh-based Infotech Solutions elucidated, “When there is a service issue, the company asks the customer to get in touch with their call center. But the call logging system is flawed and the customer ends up coming back to us. APC expects the customer to do all sorts of tests beforehand which he is not aware of and as a result we have to send an engineer from our company to get their problems sorted out.”

He further mentioned that according to APC's policy, call logs or service issues have to be sorted within 48 hours whereas it takes their service providers seven to eight days to respond and rectify the problem. However, that is not the only problem plaguing dealers in the region. Vidhani mentioned that APC's former sub-distributor, Balajee Computers for Chhattisgarh region, was agile when it came to resolving service issues but recently APC appointed another sub-distributor in Korba to look after Chhattisgarh region and since then the service and support level went down.

Talking about the same, Sunil Agarwal, CEO of Balajee Computers stated. “When we were functioning as the sub-distributor for APC we used to log the complaint with their service center and get the problems sorted out. But for the past one and half months, we have noticed that the company is lacking immensely when it comes to providing after-sales support. It takes them 20 to 25 days to respond to a call and hence we have reduced our focus on selling APC products. We are now concentrating on selling other brands.”

DJ Mistry of YouDan Computers and Peripherals, Chennai stated, “The service and support condition has definitely gone down and the condition is worsening every day and it is owing to the worsening situation that we have reduced the volume of APC products we were selling.”

Sharing his view on the issue, Ashu Batta of Chandigarh-based HH Technologies said, “The after-sales service support was never good from APC's end. Given the worsening conditions we resolved to promote the competitor brands in this space.” He further mentioned that APC now contributes less than one percent to their overall business as compared to earlier when it used to contribute two to three percent of revenue to their overall business.

Bhavesh Druva of Gujarat-based Micro Chip mentioned that in the upcountry regions the service conditions are worse as compared to the metro. The dealer however had other reasons for reducing their focus on APC. “We had reduced our focus on APC products two to three months back because the entry-level products of APC are priced slightly higher than competitor brands and the services have never been good. Earlier APC used to contribute 8-10 percent to our revenues but now it contributes less than four to five percent,” said Druva.

When contacted, A Subodh Tagare, Director-Marketing, APC stated, “We are aware of the situation in these areas. There are certain issues with regards to after-sales services and we are addressing them. These are situational problems which come up occasionally, and we handle them as and when they arise. APC-MGE reiterates its commitment towards its distributors and consumers of the region.”

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