Channel Facing 'Consumer Court' Problems

The IT Panchayat, organized in Amritsar was instrumental in terms of bringing
together the local channel community and the national distributors on a single
platform. The issues discussed during the panel discussion ranged from the usual
backend payment related problems, or DoA cases to more Amritsar focused issues
like how to face consumer courts.

Ajay K Singh of Redington India, Rajesh Garg from eSys Information
Technologies and Manik Talwar of Ingram Micro India represented the distributors
while Vikas Narang of NV Computers, Sanjeev Chabra of Cyberage Multimedia and
Manish Kandhari of Advance Solutions participated from the channel side.

Talking about a newly cropped issue of dealing with consumer courts, Vikas
Narang of NV Systems said that after facing problems with certain products, a
lot of end customers are going directly to consumer courts and are filing their
cases. As a result of this, a lot of effort and time of channel community is
going towards attending the court proceedings and hearings.

(L-R) Panelists at the event: Ajay K Singh of Redington India, Rajesh Garg of eSys, Manik Talwar of Ingram Micro India, Vikas Narang of NV Computers, Sanjeev of Cyberage Multimedia and Manish Kandhari of Advance Solutions

“Customers go to consumer courts and we have to attend all the hearings since
we sell the products. This is a big issue for us since we spend a lot of time,
effort and money on such cases. A distributor is equally responsible in these
cases. They should also share the burden of attending these hearings at consumer
courts,” he added.

Reacting to this issue, Singh of Redington India said that a distributor is
always willing to help the channel community and even in this case it will do
the same.

Speaking about importance of distributors in markets like Amritsar, Chabra of
Cyberage Multimedia said that today a lot of responsi­bility lies on the
shoulders of a national distributor but they are not living up to it. “The
channel community needs the support of distributors like Ingram, Redington or
eSys but they are not performing their duties to the fullest. There are many a
time when we have to run around for small things,” he explained.

Defending the distributor's stance, Rajesh Garg of eSys, opined that
distributors are doing what they can to provide their support to the channel
community. However, he clarified that there are times when the same
responsibility lies with the vendor side.

Backfooting on backends

Commenting on the issues of backend payments, Kandhari of Advance Solutions
said that there are many discrepancies that exist within the system today. “It
takes a lot of time and effort to actually get something that has promised to
you a long time back. I personally think that a distributor should help us out
with these activities,” he added.

Talwar of Ingram Micro firmly mentioned that his company always tried its
best to provid relevant backend payments on time.

NV Systems cited a bizarre example of dead on arrival (DoA) case in Amritsar
where Narang got a sealed box of camera but only the accessories were found
inside the sealed box.

Putting forward the distributor's side, Singh from Redington said that cases
like this cannot be taken as a general impression and the company always works
towards making sure that such cases are resolved as soon as possible.

DQW News Bureau