Got a Call from JustDial? Run Away, Don't Even Think

Let's keep it strictly about Justdial's B2B and not B2C(where they'll provide free information to the end customers).

My name is Karthic and I run a web development & online marketing business in Chennai. For the past 1.5yrs, I received at least 100+ calls(not exaggerating) from Justdial asking me to take their paid listings.

I'm happy with my client base and current projects. Most of the projects that I receive are referral ones which is very healthy for us. But still who would say no to an other project?

JustDial's Suspicious Acts Before Becoming Their Paid Customer

Suspicious #1: I was okay to pay them, since they promised to send me the relevant leads. But what made me to suspect is that, over phone, they said I can start for one month  and pay X amount. They sent an executive then to explain more in person. After talking for about 1.5hrs about the process, leads, etc., this guy said I'll have to pay for atleast 3 months in advance. My argument was that if I'm getting a business leads, I'll be happy to pay on my own and so why should I get into minimum contract?

Suspicious #2: After thinking for sometime, I understand that there maybe some expenses for them and they may have to make sure I at least be their customer for 3 months. I called up JD guys again to sign a contract with their minimum 3-months rule. But, this time I'm getting different rates from different people. Not sure, who lies or who is speaking the truth. The telecaller will say, it will cost Rs.X for a month and the executive will say it will cost Rs.X+X.

Suspicious #3: Again, I understand that telecallers deceive you with wrong information saying low cost and making us expect high, because their job is only to fix appointments as far as I heard from an insider.  With that in mind, I asked them to send an executive again. Now, these guys come with a new rule, the contract is for minimum 3 months and I cannot cancel it for 1 year. Yes, even if you wanted to cancel it, you CANNOT CANCEL THE JUSTDIAL CONTRACT FOR 1 YEAR.

As someone who is always to expand the business, I'm okay with all those things as long as they send me the minimum number of leads to cover at least the cost paid to them.

JustDial's HORROR EXPERIENCE After Becoming Their Paid Customer

Horror #1: After handing over the cheque for 3 months and signing contract for 1year, the executive said I'll get the invoice by my mail. It's been 12 days and made 4 calls asking them to send my invoice, I did NOT receive it yet.

Horror #2: When they called me to confirm my contract, I again asked them to not activate my contract before I'm seeing the invoice. But they activated my contract although I said them not to.

The reason I'm very particular about invoice thing is,  I received 9 messages from Justdial asking me to read the invoice. This seem like they don't send you invoice, but ask you to read the invoice and then activate it(from their end though). Doesn't it look suspicious?

Horror #3: While writing this, I called up JD guy again and he confirmed that he will send me the Invoice right away. Also he is not sure why the invoice he sent me the first time did not delivered to me, despite me receiving all other JD mails including the no sense ones(that will ask you to upload logo/video with an error link, 6 mails of this type). Cool, I received the invoice finally, but sadly the file format is unknown and not opening in a PDF/Word or any other related apps.

Dude, seriously, are you doing it only to me or other customers too?

Anyway I'm still waiting for JD to send me the invoice, again.

Horror #4: Playing with the customer. While signing the contract, JD executive asked me to select the best keywords that's relevant to my business. You know, just like how a kid selects the best ice cream from the lot if he asked to select just few, likewise I took 30minutes to come up with the most relevant keywords and there was a big achievement smile on my face in the expectation of more more leads. But hey, after activating the contract, I saw that they took all the keywords irrespecive of the keywords I selected.

I called up again to correct the keywords twice and still they corrected once. But again, they did it wrongly even after sending them a relevant keywords in whatsapp and mail.

Horror #5: Unimaginably wrong Leads. They sent me 10 leads on the very first day. But know what? Here is a list of what those people wanted from my service. Remember that I'm providing website development and online marketing services and I'm not a owner of Justdial/quickr/sulekha.

Lead #1- Sir, can I get Sulekha's number?

Lead #2- How can I post my business listing in Justdial?

Lead #3- I want to sell my old bakery machine, how can I do that?

Lead #4- I provide manpower supplier, do you need? Jeez, he is selling to me.

Lead #5- I need a web hosting. Hosting? JD, are you not aware that I told you clearly I'm NOT into hosting business? I mentioned it specifically because sometimes people misunderstand between hosting and web designing serviecs.

Lead #6- Repeated Lead, Lead #3.

Lead #7- *****, why the hell are you guys keep calling me? Did I ask you a web development services? ****. 

Lead #8- Repeat of Lead #3.

Lead #9 & Lead #10 - Did not attend my call yet.

Jeez, I'm not into web designing and online marketing business and I'm yet to find a single lead related to my business after some 3-4 days.

Horror #6: Arrogant Customer Service. I really want to name this support executive, she was that rude. Anyway, let's have a Fake name respecting her privacy- Linima. When I told her that I'm getting only the wrong leads, she argued with me saying that it was all not wrong leads and how can I simply blame them, in a police-like tone. I told her I called every lead personally and found they are invalid. Still she argued as they don't send wrong leads. I said her if she can check with those leads, she said JD prohibits her to verify if the leads are genuine. So what's the plot here? You JD send me wrong leads, when I complain about it, you won't accept and you also won't verify, what kind of plot is that?

Horror #7: Call Logs not made, atleast that's how Customer Reps behave like, you have to say everything everytime you call. I called up the customer service team to request them to cancel my contract. Yes, I remember they told me that I cannot cancel my contract for a minimum 1 year time. But they didn't tell me that their customer support team will act deaf to my problems, they didn't told me that I'll get all kinds of wrong leads but the relevant ones, they didn't told me that although I give them a right keywords n number of times, they'll go with only the ones they want, they didn't told me that if there is a wrong leads, they can't verify it. And they told me that they do NOT have an option to cancel your contract, but they can solve the problem. I told the guy on phone that I made multiple calls and no action made yet. He said this was the first time he is listening me, lol, are you sure that you want me to go and talk to every representative to complain about the problems that JD create?

So what is this Justdial company good for? Amitabh Bachan, the brand ambassador?

Here, in short of the entire complain if you don't have a time to read all these JD's BS.

#1: Justdial keeps bugging you to take their business plans, every single day, even if you ask them to stop call you.

#2: You will NOT see one price, all their executives will say different prices.

#3: You will have to pay in advance for 3 months and sign for a minimum of 1year contract.

#4: You will NOT get your invoice. Or it will be heavily delayed, if you ask for it or you'll get a corrupted file that will never open, on any app.

#5: You CANNOT cancel the contract, no matter what, even if Justdial is negatively hurting your business.

#6: Justdial place their own keywords, ignoring the relevant keywords you provide, any number of times.

#7: Justdial sends only the wrong leads.

#8: Justdial's customer team will not accept that they have sent the wrong leads and fight till you accept that they are right leads.

#9: Justdial's customer team doesn't have a way to verify if they have sent the wrong leads or right ones.

P.S:

This may seem exaggerated again, but no I didn't, infact, I kept it low to keep myself positive.

I'm not working for Sulekha/Quikr/Askme or any of JD's competition and so no need for me to accuse JD here.

I have all the calls recorded, with JD executives, telecallers and customer service team. If anyone thinks my blog is not upto the fact, I'm ready to share all the calls, emails and SMSes that I had with Justdial.

Justdial Call? Run Away.

Update: It's 2.13pm 4th Apr'15 and I still did NOT receive my invoice even after making consistent complaints for few days now. Understand this is just an invoice which every genuine company should give without even requesting it. Anyway, couple of days later, I received a mail with an attachment titled 'Annexure' and I saw only 'pay-by-method' and 'amount to pay'. It doesn't look like Invoice for me in any dimension as it didn't even include the word 'amount paid'. When I called up JD, they said 'pay-by' is equals to 'Amount Paid'. Maybe am I so poor at legal things that I'm so ignorant to understand that 'pay-by' means 'paid'? or JD avoiding paying tax? someone please clarify me, maybe I became too suspicious about JD because of their acts?

Update: It's been 3+ days since Justdial Customer Rep Bhav*s*ri asked me to provide 3 irrelavant leads' number to her, so that she could verify if they are really irrelevant. I called up JD today to inquire about that, she told all those were very relevant leads to my business and it made me to feel like I lied or I was drunk by that time. But no, I checked again as by default my phone records all the calls and I'm right, those 3 calls were completely, completely irrelevant.

Here's the last call I had with Bhuvaneswari, in which she said all the leads that I complained as irrelevant were all real and she was like 'how can you, complain?', dude, was she trying to accuse me?

14th Apr'15: As per one of JD insider's advice, I have sent a mail to JD Mumbai at 'Mumbai@Justdial.com'. Asking me to keep his role anonymous, he said Chennai team is doing all these shit for many of his referred-customers too and promised that Mumbai team will call me back within 24hrs and they will solve the issue.

16th Apr'15: I got a call back from 'Justdial', but again from Chennai. The phone-rep said she had read my email and she want to discuss it with me. When I said her that I don't want to speak with entire Chennai team as I have already spoken to numerous people and I want 'Head office' mumbai to interfere in this matter, she gave me an awesome reply 'Sir, Mumbai people don't speak Tamil and how can they talk to you?', we were communicating this in English and my mail was in English too. Anyway, that's a brilliant answer, I'm planning to cut contract with all Google, Facebook, etc., until they open a local branch in Chennai and employ a Tamil-Speaking executive, because you know, that's the only language we speak, in English.

Anyway, this phone-rep said she wanted to discuss with me and I said I wasn't ready to as I already had discussed the same rotten issue with numerous other people, she came up with Justdial's golden words 'But this is the first time I'm talking to you, Sir'. She was way polite and understood the entire issue, I must appreciate. Understanding my frustration, she told me she is going to give a solution. Hi-fi, but hey, before I breath, she asked me what the problem is. Justdial, really? ***$#$$@"**&^^. I said her I need to deactivate my plan and need the refund back since Justdial failed in every departments, like Indian Cricket team of 90s, I'm sorry to say that Amitabh don't play the role of 90s Sachin here.

She kindly responded that she could try discussing with her Senior managers about deactivating my contract and not sure about the refund. After I pressed her that I NEED REFUND because Justdial.. 'read above'. She said she'll try and said she can provide only 50% of the amount-paid as a Refund, Why? Oh she said 50% of the amount been utilized for me. Okay, what, how? All I see is an irrelevant invalid leads, even that stopped coming after my complaints, now literally nothing from Justdial. Hey just a minute, didn't you start the call saying you got a solution for me?

Couple of Quick Justdial's Odd Plots:

1. Few times Justdial complained that I didn't pick their calls and that's why my issue was not solved. Know when they would call you? At a time when you can't pick a phone, mostly after 7pm or 8pm as that's when you'll be travelling home or just you won't attend because it's not office hours.
2. This is not just with Justdial, but many other companies too. Whenver you make any complaints on Public Forums or complaint boards, you won't see any immediate response. But after weeks or months, someone from 'Justdial' will contact you in that same forum and mostly they'll write a pre-designed text 'Hi (your-forum-name), we are sorry about the incovenience you are facing, could you please provide us your ticket number, so that we can address the issue'. Know what? you may have lost interest after weeks or months of making complaints and you won't waste your time participating in that forum thread. They too either don't follow up or follow up with a post as 'Sir, we tried reaching you, but you were not responding to this post and by phone'. See what? either they follow up or not, your non-responsiveness make them look good in the eyes of innocent customers. Just an observation as I'm an online marketer too and I know the games :)

Update on Apr 17th 2015: As told in point #1 above, Justdial has closed my issue saying 'Customer Did NOT Respond'. Did you see what I said? They call me after office hours and close the case if we don't respond. But before signing up with them, I used to get multiple calls even after denying them many times saying I wasn't interested. How Low can Justdial go?

Update on Apr 20th 2015: I got a call from Ms.Sh*r Pr*y* of Justdial Customer Care team(or escalation team, I'm never ever told which department those people belong to). Anyway, she said that they were ready to offer me 50% of the money paid. But hey, getting refunded is not the objective. Anyway, I asked her when they didn't provide any genuine service, how was my other 50% of the money been utilized. She was unwilling to explain. Upon insisting, she told some portion of the amount are for-Tax and other portion was for the leads provided. Wait, I never got a valid lead, anyway, regarding 'Tax', I have been told by their 'Sales team' and 'Marketing executive' that they provided me a tax-deduction and I didn't had to pay tax. I brought that topic to her and she got frustrated and said 'You cannot say those things to me, you should contact those people who said that to you'. Justdial, seriously?

Wanna listen the Hung up call when account detail was asked? Go check here- https://soundcloud.com/karthickk3/justdial-b2b-escalation-call

Anyway, I asked her to send the 'utilization details of the money used' along with refund details. She agreed to send it, but it's past 2 working days and no email yet.

--

I tried contacting some top Justdial people via social networks and one of them helped me providing Mumbai Customer Service Manager's email. As I sent out a mail to her, she forwarded the issue to Chennai Customer Manager.

We are in loop now.

And after a lot of struggle, Ms.Sh*r Pr*y* sent me 2 mails. The first one was about 'Leads Report' that Justdial provided me. Lol, even that report had many invalid mails, now I'm really wondering that they fought me with although they knew that they had sent me invalid mails. Here is the Screenshot of that.

That column named 'Company Name', they were the customer requirement. Need a little logic? Think why a person from 'Sulekha or OLX' call Justdial for help, being a competitor themselves? Those were people asking for OLX's and Sulekha's number and Justdial forwarded that to me saying they were asking for web development. Jesus!

And now, do you want to read out a mail officially came from Justdial's Escalation Team?

Read it

You should look out for their command over Language. In online marketing, we knew some secrets. One of them was how Email Providers judge an email to be spam/genuine, one factor was English. How could Justdial send out an email just like that without even being aware that sometimes language mistakes will show things in an entirely different meaning? 

Anyway, I replied them instantly, read my reply below:

Bottomline: They agreed to provide the refund. End of Story.

Oh, Horror Starts Again- The Manager

But I understand from her(Manager) voice that she knew what she was doing to me is horrible(trying to put me in the same phase again) and she seemed helpless, maybe even she is NOT happy with Justdial? Whatever the case, Customer Manager should not act like a bottom level executive and she must understand the exact scenarios, the problems customer is facing, etc., 

As per the last mail of Justdial, they agreed to provide refund. But now, I got a call from Chennai Customer Care Manager. I thought I'm gonna get a solution and some apologies from Justdial.

I expected Customer Care Manager to understand the customer's mindset, their insider problems, etc., But just like her team, she again started asking me to change keywords promising I'll get relevant leads.

Justdial, for the 100th time I'm saying, my keywords are perfect. The inquiries/leads you sent was unimaginably irrelevant even if you consider the wide range of keywords initially selected by you(you did that by mistake, after handpicking the keywords).