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A small yet important thread on how an absolutely flawed system put in place by @asianpaints and their dealer networks ensure that most customers never end up with the exact colour they are looking for.
Many painters often say, that there will always be some difference from the shade you choose and the result. A lot depends on the surface and application, but what nobody @asianpaints will tell you is that the most important part is the base colour in which the tint is dropped.
Say you want a nice warm shade like Magnolia - 0387 on the @asianpaints shade deck. You buy from a dealer, pay good money to a painter and after two or maybe 3 coats you wonder why it looks so muted or so deeply saturated. First reaction is always to pin the blame on the worker.
You go back to the dealer and he washes his hands off and asks you to lodge a complaint with the very inefficient customer support of @asianpaints . After days of consistent chasing, a guy named Utsav Majithia will show up, with no id card and no proof of being their employee.
All this while, your work is halted, painters are getting bummed, the day rate is piling but there is no sense of urgency or any written correspondence from @asianpaints . Finally, out of frustration, the painters leaving you in a house with varying shades of the same colour.
In the meantime, Utsav Majithia will conduct a lame investigation. He asks you to send pictures of the paint cans and promises to arrange a visit by a member of some mythical technical team of @asianpaints No such thing happens. But they have conducted some inquiry. Apparently!
So the culprit is the dealer, a certain “authorised” yet one of the many never supervised store called Kamal Hardware. The second culprit is the painter who didn’t check the contents by applying a patch or verifying if the bases colours of both cans were same. And @asianpaints ?
When you go to get a litre of paint, the @asianpaints dealer inputs the code in a computerized dispenser and informs you of the price. On the same screen if you notice carefully will be a code for something called as Base Colour. Which is nothing but a corresponding white.
So for a Magnolia(0387), the corresponding base colour is the HQ2N. HQ10 partners the very cool green Monsoon Mood, HQ20 is friends with Terracotta and so on. And here is where the rot begins. Very few dealers of @asianpaints will mix the right tint with the right base.
Some @asianpaints dealers try to remove old stock by selling you two 10 litre cans instead of a singular 20. One can will be of the right base and the other will be another. If your painter doesn’t mix the two together before applying, well, say hello to UNNEES BEES!
In my case, I received one can of @asianpaints Magnolia in a fresh batch of HQ2N, another in BR WHITE, and a third which was although made in HQ2N but it was a 2018 can and looked like someone had peed into it.
As if that wasn’t enough, the dealer, Kamal Hardware’s official @asianpaints colour mixing software and machine weren’t upgraded for a while. Which ensured that all three cans were wrongly tinted as well!
Many have faced this, especially when painting a surface white. Some douchey @asianpaints dealer will stick em a can of BR WHITE and they keep wondering why there is an ugly blue/violet cast. What you need is an EB1.
So what happens after this? Nothing really. While the entire responsibility of ensuring that dealers offer the right products to customers rests entirely on @asianpaints , you’d be surprised at how shabby their Quality Control and ownership of mistakes is.
There are dealers of @asianpaints , including the one I mentioned above who use the tinting machine for other brands. Like they’ll make you the same shade in a base colour by ICI, or Shalimar or some local brand, because all customers love a good discount.
How does @asianpaints fix this? By simply asking the customer, to go to hell! There is literally no formal communication, no emails, and no visits by that mythical technical team. Where does that leave ordinary customers who do not have the time to dig this deep?
It leaves you strategically with only two options. 1. Hire a painter on a labour + highly inflated material contract. 2. Hire the very expensive @asianpaints home painting service. Even those chaps will give you two options. A service with a GST added bill or no bill!
So the next time you buy/use an @asianpaints product, you SHOULD do a thorough check and insist on viewing the entire tinting process in person. Or there’s a better option, avoid the fuckers. My experience is doubly soured by the fact that we are all shareholders too!
The company spends crores on atrocious branding exercises and visits to tacky celebrity homes. Nowhere, to my knowledge, does @asianpaints educate consumers about the importance of base colours. Maybe this is how they create demand for their own services!
Almost a week now and so far no formal communication despite sharing our email ids a month ago. For a company of this size and reach, @asianpaints reluctance to solve this in the right way, without inducing more stress, is a sign of how truly unprofessional they are.
Maybe it is time for people to know how @asianpaints passes the buck and attempts to tire out a customer. More than 2 weeks have been wasted. First in chasing them to act, and now watching them change their stance and dump off all responsibility of their faulty products.
3 weeks since complaint and 2 weeks since acceptance of fault by your technical head Ajinkya. We were to receive revised compensation email 2 weeks ago from Suryavanshi. Many emails and phone calls later, all we get from @asianpaints is a timid tweet/email. Shame on you.
So, this is how it works. Radio silence from @asianpaints while the customer sits with an unfinished site. A street-side hawker has more ethics than you and your staff.
More time lost, no answers, no solutions, only empty assurances followed by U Turns and a half done house. Have just received a veiled threat by @asianpaints asking me to refrain from posting about their unethical conduct on twitter. Well. Hope you enjoy reading my pinned tweet!
At this point it would be interesting to add some specifics here. On the 8th of January, 3 people representing @asianpaints visited us. Ajinkya Vinerkar, Ustav Majithia and a painter named Babu. They came, pushed by my tweets, with the sole intention to resolve the issue!
After the same stale discussion, photos and checking shade card etc, the three agreed that yes not only is there a difference but @asianpaints is indeed responsible for the last mile quality control of its dealers and products. Hurrah, common sense finally prevailed.
They offered us two solutions.
1. A full repaint of all the portions that have a mismatch by Babu or any other painter of @asianpaints . Labour material scaffoldings all peripherals included
2. A full and final monetary compensation of the money and time we have spent.
1. A full repaint of all the portions that have a mismatch by Babu or any other painter of @asianpaints . Labour material scaffoldings all peripherals included
2. A full and final monetary compensation of the money and time we have spent.
