As a kid, the Naidu Hall discount sale that is on, during their anniversary every year was something that I used to look forward to, since that’s when I used to get my Diwali dress. :) After the Vinayaka Chaturthi pooja at home, we used to rush to the shop, which used to be so crowded that one had to squeeze oneself through the crowds to reach the rows and rows of dresses hanging from the shelves. Unlike how it is now, at that time, the sale used to be on for just one day. (It was later extended to 3 days and today the sale is on for more than 2 weeks!) The general opinion was that the dresses though of excellent quality, were a bit expensive at Naidu Hall. So I guess everyone wanted to shop there during the sale. I have no idea how my Mom managed to pick all those nice frocks and skirts and tops for my sister and me amidst all the chaos! This shopping during the sale continued till when I was in my class 11. Though I went there during the sale when I was in my class 12 too, I somehow didn’t like anything at all there and that’s when we decided to stop going for the sale. I did buy a few dresses there after that, but not during the sale.

But this year, the saree-crazy girl that I have become, I wanted to check out the saree collection there and the sale seemed to give me the perfect excuse to indulge in some shopping. :P I remembered a beautiful black and maroon raw silk designer saree that a friend had got from Naidu Hall a few years back and I had decided that I would surely get at least one saree there. I went there with my Mom on a morning during that looong weekend and at that time, we happened to be the only ones there on the floors having sarees. Lesser the crowd the better it is to do shopping. Generally, when you go to some shop where there are fewer customers at that time, you will find that you will have the undivided attention of the salesperson and they would patiently show you everything that’s there. But this wasn’t the case here and we didn’t buy any saree at all, thanks to the poor customer service there!

We went to the second floor that had the designer sarees. I told the salespersons there that I didn’t want to see synthetic designer sarees at all and asked them to show what other designer sarees they have. There was a silk designer saree lying on the silk designer saree section and we just had a look at it. When we asked the lady at the counter to show more sarees, she wanted to know our budget. I had neither a pre-decided budget nor the type of saree that I was going to buy. All I wanted to was to buy some nice saree. So when I told her that we didn’t have any specific budget in mind and I first wanted to see what all varieties they have, the reply that I got was to just have a look at the sarees in the shelf and see the colours and she would take it out only if we wanted to. So we asked her to show some 3-4 sarees. I would have been ok with this if she had already showed sarees of different types and asked us to choose the colours. After all, I too wouldn’t have wanted her to take out all the sarees if I didn’t like the work. But how will we know the different varieties that they have if we have to see the colour alone? If you take out a saree from the shelf, it might not be like how you imagined at all. Sometimes the work will be so nice and go so well with the colour that you may end up buying it even though that colour may not be your favourite. But when the person showing the sarees doesn’t seem to be interested at all, how long can we ask her to show the sarees? We went to the next section only to find that there were no more designer sarees to see. Are there so less designer sarees there?

Though there have been many instances when we had done shopping despite the bad customer service, I really didn’t expect this here and was so disappointed. I was ranting about this to my friend, only to have her tell me that the customer service has been bad in Naidu Hall for the past few years! Since I have got only salwars there and those were all hanging in the hangars and we didn’t really need the help of any salespersons to see the collection, I have never felt that way before. Anyway, here I was willing to splurge my money and that didn’t seem to happen. :( But anyway, splurge I finally did. :D And that too at a shop where the customer service was excellent! Wanna know where? Stay tuned! ;)