YOUR FALSE MISSION STATEMENT - Your family's health and well-being is our passion...

Sir,

I am a resident of Hyderabad, India. My mother underwent an emergency bypass and Mytral valve replacement at Asian Heart Institute, Mumbai.

Upon being asked by the Hospital, I went to the Apollo Pharmacy, Shop No 1 and 2, Bandra Geetanjali CHS 234, S V Road, Mumbai, India - on the 10th of April at appx 5.30pm, to buy a Glucometer.

The shop manager strongly recommended the J & J, One Touch Horizon Glucometer Machine (@ Rs 990) as well as a refill pack (@ Rs 600) of the same – vide Inv no CC0000128 (TIN 27630254372).

Trusting the famous (now infamous) Johnson and Johnson brand, I was suckered into buying the same.

A doctor visited my mom at around 10pm. Upon repeatedly trying, he said the Glucometer was defective. He asked me to go back to the Pharmacy and have it replaced asap and get him the reading.

Sir, the 24 hour pharmacy REFUSED to make the exchange – and kept insisting that I contact the J & J help desk for any product complaints (at 11pm). They had their shutters closed and here I was standing on the street and pleading with them. I could get the pharmacy to replace the J & J, Horizon Glucometer with an Accu-Check one, AFTER requesting and pleading for over 2 hours !!! I HAD to get the reading read out to my doctor and the pharmacy manager was the least concerned. Only when I threatened to call the cops and lodge a case of cheating, did he, almost abusingly agree.

AND THEN TOO, HE REFUSED TO EXCHANGE THE REFILL PACK.

This is the J & J promise !

I am appalled at this attitude – of your dealer, your product and your sales support. Your policy seems to just sell, caring a shit of the consequences thereafter.

I await your conducting whatever investigating you would like to, and revert to me within the next 72 hours. I propose to take this up, first individually with your Board of Directors and subsequently with the concerned Govt dept and then the media. I do not want any unsuspecting innocent victim to fall prey, blindly trusting ‘reputed’ names, like I did.

I have faced the inconvenience of going back and forth (from Bandra Kurla Complex to Linking Road), the humiliation of pleading standing on the street (through a cast-iron gate) in the middle of the night, the ire of a doctor and am now saddled with some third class strips of an even more third class product – sold by a supposedly first class company.

Sanjiv