Why is it?

Why is it that when I buy stocks using an online trading service, money is instantly deducted from my account, but when I sell stocks using the same service, I will get money after two working days?

Why is it that when there is a false transaction in my telephone/credit card/travel bill and I raise a dispute, I have to pay first and then prove that the transaction is false and then if proven, expect the refund in some weeks?

Why is it that when I purchase something using my credit card, the dues on my card go up immediately, but when I make an online payment, it would take 2-3 days for the "transaction to reflect" in the balance?

Why is it that when I use a prepaid service (shopping card, mobile phone) and the company has deducted an elephantine sum from my balance, I have no way of talking to a human in the company about this?

And after all this, why am I being given the sugar-pill that I, being the customer, am a King, and am most important to these large corporations running these businesses?

Is the individual so downtrodden and helpless in this corporation-led economy?

More Celebrations!

Happy Almost New Year

I pay here, there, everywhere...

All motorised vehicles in India are supposed to have paid a road tax, which among other things, is supposed to pay for construction and maintenance of roads on which these vehicles would ply.

So what exactly is the rationale behind charging toll for the fancy new highways, toll bridges, expressways?

Apparently these new facilities are of superior quality and put extra load on the funds in their creation and maintenance.

So if I need to pay extra when I travel on such a road, shouldn’t I get a refund when I travel on a road that has not been constructed properly or has not been properly maintained, which would mean almost any Indian road apart from these fancy ‘tollable’ roads?

What say?

Festivities

Merry Christmas, Festivus, Season’s and Reason’s Greetings, Happy Hannukah, Solstice and Wintereenmas to all of you.

Have a starry christmas

Have a starry christmas
Originally uploaded by recaptured

Happy holidays everyone!

Spread the cheer

Long time Flickr users, especially the “Explore” enthusiasts obviously know BigHugeLabs and their Scout service, which lists out any user’s “Explore” pictures, either those currently in the charts or those which have ever been in the charts, depending on the settings.

Those photographers who get a kick out of seeing their photographs on Flickr’s Explore frontpage keep visiting Scout to see how many of their snaps have been touched by the Magic Donkey, and whether the number has gone up since the last time they checked. It’s an addiction for some.

So I was sort of taken aback, pleasantly, when Scout tells me today that 405 of my 407 Flickr photographs are “totally awesome”. Turns out this is part of their Christmas cheer programme. A cute red Santa cap accompanies the message which tells me that. You can go back to your routine “normal” Scout. But there’s no way to get this back as far as I can see.

They brought a smile to my face no doubt, albeit with a cute li’l lie.

How are you spreading the joy in the holidays?

Merry Christmas!

Special treatments

Last Friday I was flying from Delhi to Bombay on an IndiGo flight. Knowing that it is a low-cost carrier, I was not expecting anything apart from getting me from point A to B.

So it did come across as a surprise when one of the stewardesses selling the eatables addressed me by name (though I was not sitting on the seat my boarding pass mentioned), and offered me one food and one drink item free of cost, because I was a corporate customer. At a maximum cost of one fifty rupees they left a good impression on me.

But then I flew IndiGo again twice earlier this week. Again for official reasons. But this time I did not get such a ‘surprise’ (which it would hardly have been, come to think of it).

Later I find out from a colleague that there is a line mentioning this perk on these low cost airline tickets for corporate customers. And that you can ask the stewardesses for your free items.

The pleasant experience lost its pleasantness during the later journeys.

Sure I could ask them for it. But I don’t see how corporate fliers would say “I should get a freebie” when stewardesses are asking them if they would like to buy something, especially when the value of the freebie is not more than two hundred rupees.

It’s not the money I save in not having to buy something to eat. It’s nothing compared to the money we spend on the travel. It’s the gesture that says that the airline cares for me and remembers me.

Does not take too much effort, is not too costly. The keyword here is, consistency. If they cared enough to check their roster of passengers in every flight and make sure they did such things every time they flew, the experience will be pleasurable every time.

Hello Nagpur

Nagpur! The city where I had so far only seen the railway station en route to other places.

So far the roads are wide and clean, much like south Delhi and the people are friendly and helpful.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

New look. Like it?

Smart Web - How Smart?

While reading this Rediff.com story about Maruti Madhavrao Phad, a Maharashtra government employee who got injured during the recent terrorist attack on Bombay, I noticed something.

It is not related to the story as such. If you scroll down to the end of the story you’ll see the credits for is particular story. It reads “Image: Maruti [Get Quote] Madhavrao Phad at his home. Text: A Ganesh [Images] Nadar. Photograph: Uttam Ghosh”


See the screenshot of the line. Notice the yellow areas? These are smart tags which apparently the engine parsing the code of the pages inserts to “enrich” the user’s browsing experience, by providing additional information related to the content the user is browsing through at the moment.

Note the word “related”? Now see what the yellow highlights in the image show. “Get Quote” for Maruti. Here Maruti is the first name of the hero of the story, not the name of a car-making company. Yet, the Rediff engine treats it as the company’s name, and is offering you stock quotes for it. And for Ganesh, the link is a Rediff search link with the string “Ganesh” - marked “Images”. Which means that it would return images of the Lord Ganesha, and other celebrities called “Ganesh”. Not images of the author of the article in this case, A Ganesh Nadar.

And both these tags are intrusive, they not only break the text they are placed in, they break proper names of people. Intrusive and irreverent. Considering the tone of the article, even more so.

Were they really necessary?

Religion vs Consumerism

Came across this news item today.

Excerpts:

Christopher Jamison, the Abbot of Worth in West Sussex, has accused the corporation of "exploiting spirituality" to sell its products and of turning Disneyland into a modern day pilgrimage site.

Further

While he acknowledges that Disney stories carry messages showing good triumphing over evil, he argues this is part of a ploy to persuade people that they should buy Disney products in order to be "a good and happy family".

He cites films such as Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians that feature moral battles, but get into children's imaginations and make them greedy for the merchandise that goes with them.

"The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt is that our children's world needs Disney," he says.

"So they absolutely must go to see the next Disney movie, which we'll also want to give them on DVD as a birthday present.

"They will be happier if they live the full Disney experience; and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland."

And

"Celebrity news magazines do no apparent external harm, but are a complete waste of interior time and space.

"Envy tells us to stop facing the challenges of the present life and to live in some future fantasy. Such envy drives a large part of our consumer culture."

So religion is not happy that consumerism is taking its place. It's like an open PR exercise where you criticise your competition of doing exactly what you have been doing.

If you see the irony of the whole episode, I'm sure you'll enjoy this strip.

Vehicle versus Person

The Constitution of India gives me the right to travel, stay and seek employment anywhere within India. But apparently my vehicle cannot be taken along with me, without paying through my nose for "fines", "bribes", "repeat taxes", without going through hordes of paper work, police checks, queues.

Maybe if humans also had to compulsorily display a number plate which predominantly identified them with the state they come from, I would also be not allowed to enter places like Maharashtra. The Nation's Constitution can take a hike when it's Maha-Rashtra (Great Nation) talking about.

You won’t sell to me?

The other day I went to a medicine shop and asked for a medicine from a prescription. The pack of 10 costs four-fifty. I open the wallet and find that the smallest paper currency I have is a fifty. The second smallest? Five hundred! And the loose change all totalled up to two rupees fifty.

I gave an apologetic sigh and offered the shopkeeper the fifty hoping that he'd give me change. With a stern look the shopkeeper took back the medicines from my hand, gave me a hand signal denoting refusal and put the medicine back in the shelf, without saying a word. I asked him why. And he says “We won’t entertain this”. That’s all.

I walk over to the next shop, which was like two blocks away, enter it. The guy looks friendly. I thought let's take a chance. So I asked him for the medicine, and while he’s taking it out of the shelf, I casually ask “You have change for fifty, don’t you?”. He looks back at me, and politely says “No”, keeping the medicine back in the shelf.

So I ask him, “You are a shop. How come you don’t have change?” to which his response is “If you can’t produce change for 4.50, how do you expect us to keep change for 45.50?”

So is having a bigger note worthless if you’re buying a small item? I know that if you offer a pan-wallah a thousand rupee note for a five rupee cigarette it's absurd, but this is not a difference of 995 we’re talking about or a small pan-wallah. Both shops were decent-sized medicine shops, which I’ve grown up seeing and buying from. What is the reason for their refusal? Is short change really short in the market? Is day-to-day liquidity so low that people are clinging on to any short change they have and are refusing business? Or is it just a stand they have taken that they will not entertain business which makes them do this ‘heavy work’ of counting and returning change?

What use is a bigger currency note if I cannot buy small things with it? I had over a thousand rupees with me right then, but I could not buy medicines worth less than ten rupees.

If there is a liquidity problem, then it is worrying. But if the problem is in the mindsets of the store owners, then it is ridiculous. If they are facing a real short change problem, I think they should offer other channels of payment. Accept credit/debit/charge cards, accept cheques.

Why lose business over this issue, and why dishonour a customer even when he has more money than needed for the transaction?