Why Karbonn Mobiles Doesn’t Deserve A Foothold In The Indian Market

We generally don’t do this. We have always supported our very own Indian brands, but Karbonn mobile has a lot to work on before deserving a decent share in the Indian market.

DISCLAIMER : The following has been written as an outcome of a disastrous experience.

A quick check on the devices they offer and the price tag at which they come in is something appreciable, they have made a perfect list for the Indian market. Quite a few devices are rip offs of already present companies in china (Spreadtrum & others, if we are not wrong), anyways we are not complaining about that. Even Micromax does the same, right from their Bling to the Canvas 2.

We first dived into the after sales support after a good friend handed over his bricked phone for help. A quick check on the internet reveals that the STOCK firmware is NOT available for the user to flash. Karbonn’s customer support insisted on us visiting the service centre for flashing the stock firmware. Okay, we are not entitled to complain on this either. Its upto the company to make their users feel comfortable but karbonn has chosen against it. Nevermind, we are not complaining. (Samsung, HTC, Sony & Micromax provide you with flashtools as wells as the latest firmwares)

After taking time off from our busy schedules we decided to pay Karbonn Mobile’s service centre a visit. On reaching the service centre ( M/s Cell Tech, Egmore, Chennai ) the phone was taken for a quick check, they concluded that it needed a firmware update.

After about an hour they returned the phone telling it would take 4 days for them to fix it. Yeah right, four days for flashing a stock firmware onto a phone (It would take a maximum of 10 minutes to do it). Since we were aware of the technical details we started questioning the folks at the service centre (PS : More than 10 phones were returned since they were unable to flash the stock firmware)

The guy gave a bizzare reply stating that “Karbonn has released a new firmware for the phone and hence it would take longer”. Quick check of karbonnklinic revealed that it was a complete lie.

Further more, even if there was an update it would be around 200MB and shouldnt take longer than 2 hours to download. Having irked them enough we decided to check out the other service centre. Another day and another drive, same result though.

All this has been informed to Karbonn Mobile at their mail address “info@karbonnmobiles.com” , their reply was even shocking stating that they handled only requests of the northern zone. This is the limit for any consumer, the mail ID is the only way to reach them and a really caring reply for our queries.