Even more on Airtel Customer Service…

I can’t trust a word those guys say any longer. After their last call the GPRS still did not work. So, I decided to give up on this 249 blackberry + Free Unlimited GPRS plan and decided to reactivate my old weekly plan. So, I called them up today and asked them to cancel the blackberry plan and guess what did the guy tell me. That it has already been deactivated as of 2nd May. Deactivated? The same day I wasted trying to call up all their different departments to make it work! :O

I am appalled, I am speechless, I didn’t know if I should shout out my frustration at that guy. I merely confirmed, “Are you sure?”. He was. Good. I asked about how to activate mobile office. He told me. I did that. Now, I really, really hope that I don’t get a bill for both the services.

Sigh! Airtel – तुमने मेरा दिल तोड़ दिया। Shahrukh Khan – are you listening? (In case you are wondering where did Shahrukh Khan come from – he endorses the brand!)

More on Airtel Customer Service

As if what happened last week was not enough, I missed a call from a number I did not quite recognize today afternoon. When I called back, it started giving me all the latest ads of Airtel. So, kept the phone. In the evening got the call from the same number. It was somebody apologizing for the problem I had, told me that it has been fixed, and that this was a confirmatory call from Airtel and whether there was something else he could help me with. No, there was nothing else. Thanks so much for fixing it. You mean, I can access GPRS now. Yes, that’s what he meant. Cool. After that, I thought of trying it out. But to be on the safer side, decided to switch on and off the phone. And you can guess the reason I am writing this post. The GPRS still isn’t working. Grrrr… I am scared of going through all their departments again tomorrow. I guess, I would give up the greed of cheaper unlimited GPRS and just go with my older plan. Those were such peaceful days.

Airtel Customer Service

I thought they were Gods, until yesterday.

I was subscribed to their weekly GPRS Mobile Office Plan, which gave unlimited GPRS and costed 140 Rs. a week. Not particularly cheap, but I like to have unlimited data plans. So, I happily went ahead with that. Until one day, I got a call from somebody at Airtel. They had a plan called 249 Blackberry with Unlimited MO. This was essentially a plan for blackberry, which had unlimited GPRS along with it. Use of blackberry would charged at 15p or so per kb, but GPRS had no extra charge. Wonderful. Substantial amount of savings per month. I didn’t have to use blackberry. I will use just the GPRS. It was fine – I was told. Okay, so I have to send an e-mail to subscribe to that plan, which I did and I promptly received a confirmatory message that this plan has been activated.

Like an alert customer I called up there customer care centre and confirmed that this new plan was activated and at the same time the old weekly one was deactivated. I was told that was the case. Great! When they sent me a message afterwards asking if I was satisfied with the interaction, I even replied saying yes. And then came thursday – the day my weekly plan used to be renewed and I received an SMS saying it has been renewed. What the hell! It was not supposed to be active any longer. I call up the customer care again and the friendly representative tells me that I need to send an SMS to cancel the plan. Why the hell did the earlier one not tell me so. Anyway, I send the message. 24 hours later I get the confirmation that the plan has been canceled. Great! Only problem is I am no longer able to use GPRS. Whatever happened to my new plan. And then started the series of calls to three departments at Airtel. One at 121 (the normal customer care), other at 7070 (the blackberry department) and yet another at 12118 (GPRS technical support). I am not exaggerating, but they kept asking me to call the other number, when I called on one of them. Finally I got frustrated and asked one of the representatives to escalate the call. She assured me that she is filing complaints and it would be resolved by 12. Great! Guess what! After that I get SMS telling me the complaint reference number. Not one, but four of them. But nothing happened until 4 in the evening. So, I call up again and give one of those reference numbers. Apparently there is no complaint filed under that reference number. Wow! I ask again to escalate the call. She tells me she will file the complaint. I kept insisting on call escalation and this is the only thing she can do, she kept telling me. Finally I lost the patience and agreed to her complaint filing. I again got two reference numbers and the ETD? Well – for a complaint filed on friday, it is 5 pm on monday. So, here I am without GPRS connection, but paying for both the connections probably.

Sigh! Airtel – I always thought better of you.

Things I want to shout from the rooftop…

of my parents’ house, of all my relatives’ and other well-wishers’ houses, and of all those eager and kindly match-makers’ houses.

Problem क्या है is what they ask, if the guy is

• as much or better educated than I am
• earns as much or more than I do
• is handsome and has a family that is ‘open minded’
• and is not interested in going outside India, exactly like me. What better, would be open to relocating to Bangalore.
• And of course, is a Maithil Brahmin

Problem है, Problem आपके attitude में है।

First things first: I don’t need to get married so that I find a man who can feed me after I am handed over from my parents. No! Even from my part time job, I can easily feed a family of 20 if required. I don’t need a husband or in-laws to feed me, to give me clothes and jewelry or to take care of me if I need to step out of the house. And that’s a MAJOR MAJOR thing. Saying that the family is ‘open minded’ means nothing. The whole matchmaking process in all the Indian communities and certainly in Maithil Brahmin communities does not take into account that someone like me is not there to slip in to the conventional role of a wife. It is no longer enough that there is a girl who is a good cook, who can be sweet to everybody in the family, who, in the most modern case, holds a flexible job and there is a man, who has a better education and job than the woman, who would be kind towards her, not beat her, not come home drunk and would strive to give her the best he can. And there is an ‘open minded’ family (I have come to hate that phrase). No, its not enough.

People tell me it would be difficult for them to find my match because of my education .

No Sir – Education does not make it difficult to find a groom for me. Thousands of engineers and MBAs are produced all over the world, dozens of them would certainly be Maithil Brahmins, at least ten of them would certainly pass the other criteria of gotra, mul etc. and at least couple of them would be happy to marry me. And to tell you the truth, unless you are really trying to get me to marry an illiterate person, exact education does not even mater to me. Education is not a problem. Its me, as an individual, who makes it difficult for the match-makers to find a groom for me. Not just difficult, I make it impossible for them to find the *right* groom for me.

My intellect, my views on life, my ways of life, my level of maturity matter and matter a lot. Far more than potential groom’s income and education and stability of the job. Not something matchmakers can ever take into consideration. I am a fiercely independent thinker, and I can not stand somebody who’d chant, “Oh! It has been happening for centuries. It must be right!” Or “That great man said it, it must be right.” That would be the end of my respect for the person and God knows what married life would look like. I hate being a hypocrite and would never be able to stand getting married to a person who had years of a serious relationship before this and left it just because he was sure his parents would not agree. And now is being an obedient son and marrying a girl of their choice who has no idea of his past and she would have no voice if that past would have affected her choice. Parents are wearing their model child as a medal, who did not go astray despite all his education and high society and married to a girl in the caste and of their choice. I would hate to be a that girl (would equally hate to be like that boy too) and the way the match making processes work, something like this happening is a real possibility. Shudder! Or getting married to somebody who has been sending utterly banal mail interpreting equally banal poetry and thinks that we share a lot in common (love for poetry – hence must get married) and sends his aunt over to meet me (to have a look at me?). I promptly showed her my dirty room and she never got back. Poetry and all is fine, but how would this girl manage the household of her nephew – she must have thought. Thank you auntie. Even poetry was not fine, you see. Or some dumbo who thinks he can impress somebody of my independent nature by agreeing to whatever I say – I need a life-partner; not a yes-man please. Or someone else, who puts on such airs, would object to anything I say (whether or not he understood it in the first place) that I am not sure if he is trying to cover his inferiority complex or is actually trying to act intellectual, smart and superior. Spare me – these are all good educated, good salaried, well intentioned respectable Maithil Brahmin young man.

Just that they are NOT FOR ME!

So – find your own groom. Right. But when you make a choice, its difficult to fall in love with a person who is of precisely your cast, but not of your gotra, of a higher mul and should have xyz in kundali……. Freedom from this in choice would be the real freedom! Until then, spare me – really.

Why?

• do pants for girls have to either not have pockets or have tiny ones?
• do ATMs have only 100 Rs. notes in the beginning of the month when you withdraw maximum amount of cash?
• do single bed-sheets can’t come plain or striped or with some good work instead of those supid prints?
• do Air Deccan flights leave on time precisely on the day when the taxi gets late?
• do telephone companies/banks/everybody-else-running-a-business-for-me ensure that their agents and Customer Service people never say the same things?

The hell that is Blue Dart

Update: Lol! As if they were waiting for me to crib on this blog Almost as soon as I had finished publishing it, door-bell rung. And you got it right It was the Blue Dart guy. Gosh! I forgot to ask his name

–

I wish they promised less. I might have been disappointed, but would not have blamed them.

Okay – so this is how it went. Had applied for a citibank credit card. As it happened that between applying and actually getting the card, the communication address I had given as the primary address had changed. Well – I thought the card will go back. A hassle. So, I decided to check up with their local office. Probably I could pick it up from there. But no. Its a credit card and they can not deliver it over the counter. Well, a pain for me. But understandable as a security measure. I ask him, if they can give me a call before delivering, so that I could be at the address given there and pick it up. But wow! They suggest something better. There is an alternative address given by the citibank (so kind of you citibank!!). That was my residential address and it hadn’t changed. It’d be great. But I may not be at home when the delivery is done. So, can they call up before delivery, so that I am there. Well, they have something even better.

“We can do a delivery in the morning.”

“Before 9.30?”

“Yes”

Wow! That’s called customer-friendliness. I am almost delighted. So, I am given the mobile number of a person, whom I am supposed to call up next morning around 8. He’d do the delivery.”

Elated I go back, call this person in the morning. He is rather outright about it that the delivery can not be done in the morning. I felt like a fool. What the hell!! One person says this, the other that. Anyway, I told him the situation and asked him whether he can give me a call before delivering. He was like he will first confirm that alternative address is there and then give me a call. I told him it is there becuase I got to know about it in their office itself. But anyway. He can confirm and give me a call. Later in the day, when I still received no call, I called him back. And he did not seem to remember a bit of what we talked in the morning!! So, I give him the waybill number etc. again, tell him the whole story again and then he hands over the phone to a lady, who did not know anything about it and I had to tell her the whole story once again. Great! 4 times already, and twice to the same person. She listens to it, asks me to hold and starts talking to some people around it. I can hear the sounds in the background, for a while they seem to be discussing this and then something totally different, oblivious of the fact that they have kept me online all this while. Frustrated I kept the phone and shooted a mail to their customer care centre through their website. Their reply was rather prompt, apologizing for the problem. The mail said that it has been forwarded to the relevant office and the delivery will be done at my residential address the next day. And it has been forwarded to the concerned manager to ensure that such incidences are not repeated again. Not at all bad. Only if I get the delivery the next day. It was a saturday. Fine, I decide to sacrifice any potential weekend plans. After all it is also my problem that the primary address has changed. And it being a saturday I do not have worry about the office. I wait for the whole day. No communications from their side. I shoot another mail to customer care. Finally around 7.30 in the evening, I get a call from a land line. The name the person tells me is the same whom I was asked to contact in the very beginning on his mobile. He asks about the address. He is confused about the locality. I tell him where it is. And then he asks whether I will be at home the next day. (Its a sunday!). I said I will be. He promises to deliver it before afternoon. This is the sunday. I waited till 2 ‘o clock. Finally decided to call the person on the mobile. And guess what! He absolutely denies having called me up yesterday. And says that its a holiday and the office is closed. What the hell!! Even I know its a sunday (which was wasted waiting for you, along with the saturday), but you yourself tell me it will be delivered today and now you make me feel like a fool again. Is there some serious naming-the-person issue in this company??

God! At one point of time I wished the card would somehow get delivered to save the hassles. Once I have the card, changing the address is easier. It can be done even online. Now, I heartily wish they’d send the card back, let the bank contact me and sort out the issue.

May God save me from being a consignee of a packet coming through blue dart ever again.Only if they promised less, I’d have resigned to it getting returned in the very beginning instead of waiting for it till now. Will they at least send it back fast?

And Bluedart management – before you make promises for God’s sake make sure the people who are supposed to deliver are aware of that. And please… they should not have this bad a memory problem. I call him up in the morning and he forgets about it by the noon. He himself calls me up in the evening and then forgets about it in the morning. Terrible. I know, he’d have many packets to deliver. But this isn’t the first service provider I am interacting with. And I have never faced anything like that before. He behaves as if he is doing some kind of favour to the company by being there.

Never again…

shall I accept to reach a new place at a short notice. There were several small things to be done this weekend and by 5 or so in the evening, they were all done. Fairly satisfactory day. Had nothing else to do. Decided to watch “Do Beegha Zameen” whose CD was lying with me. Pretty much into the movie, when I received a call from Prashant Bhaiya asking whether I would want to go for a play in St. John’s auditorium. He had got two tickets booked through a friend, but could not use it anymore. Although the time was limited, but since I could start straight away, I decided to game for it. Called up a friend to find out the location and it seemed fairly straight forward to reach there. It is opposite to BDA complex on Inner Ring Road (Koramangala). So, I confirmed with his friend and started on. It was all right and I located BDA. There would have to be a “U” turn somewhere, bit since it was almost time, I decided to park near BDA and cross the road. It was all right till then and then I made the mistake. I was unable to see any board of the auditorium on the other side of the road. So, I decided to confirm with an auto-wallah (on other occasions I have always found them to be the safe bet for taking directions). And he asked me to take right after going straight for a while. I thought the entrance would be from some other direction and took the way. But it was after asking two more people on the way and further taking the directions that I realized that all of them were sending me to St. John’s hospital. And guess what. I was afraid this might happen. So, with all of them I had confirmed after taking the direction that it was for the auditorium!!! Then on the way just escaped an accident on a dark street. The way it happened that even I had to believe that it was my fault and I said sorry to the other person who was shouting and all. But was really wondering as to how I missed the other vehicle if it was so close. Only later did I realize that the idiot hadn’t switched on his bike’s headlight on that totally dark road… And damn! He got away by shouting at me and eliciting an apology too. Well yes, I do feel like an idiot thinking of that.Thankfully, I had messaged the person who was waiting for me to get in and she had left my ticket with a volunteer, else I would have felt guilty about making her miss the play too. Anyway – through all this, I reached the hospital and asked about the auditorium. They gave me the direction all right – but it turned out that I had to take the service road and not main road to take the left turn that was needed. Grr… At the crossing the signal was green and I decided the wrong thing in the hurry and went straight. Terrible. It was a one way and I had no idea as to where I was going. But there appeared to be a way on the other side of the road too, though I was not sure, why there was no traffic on it. Anyway, I risked a “U” turn and when I reached back at the crossing I realized that I had done the wrong thing yet again. Going to the main road from there was not allowed!! Stayed there for a while like a fool (as if there was an option!). And then the traffic police waalah. “Entry is prohibited on this road, madam.” Ahem! “I am sorry, but I did not know.” “Don’t you see it is written there?” Well! Firstly I did not enter it from the place where it was written. And then, the way it was written – that small board in a dark corner – I wonder who would notice it. But anyway. Arguing with him would have been another disastrous step from my side. I just managed to convert my irritated expression into a guilty one and asked him as to how do I get back on the main road. Lo! I have to go back on that road – go to Madiwala – take thousands of turns to complete the quadrilateral and then get back on main road. Another right decision – I decided to oblige him. At that he relented and told me that for this time I can go straight on the main road. Ah! I got back. Took a “U” turn from the next place I could. I still could not locate the board of the auditorium, but I suppose I knew the place now. Still I was so ridiculously late and in such a bad mood that I decided to come back home.

If only I had taken the right decision in the beginning, I would either have been enjoying the play or “Do Beegha Zameen” instead of writing this cribbing post.

I have more woes against the Bangalore roads, traffic and traffic-police. But that later. And yeah – I know I am not alone. Still…

…

I am bored.

AIIMS Director sacked…

AIIMS Director Venugopal sacked, docs go on strike

This government will end up doing only one of the two things for this country with its autocratic behaviour. Either it will awaken the youth towards their political role or it will put an end to the democracy and stable governance here.

If I have to analyze and discuss it, I do not have heart for it.

If I have to vent out my emotional feelings, I do not have enough swear words in my memory.

Down with Ramadoss and the likes of him.

Technorati : AIIMS, India, Politics, Ramadoss

A black day!

I searched for “Monsoon session of parliament” on Google. Just to see how far we are from the cremation of something even closely resembling to what can be called reasonable. It was almost ironical that when the first result I found there was this. The first two sentences are

IT HAS become a tedious practice for newspapers to describe the start of any Parliament session as being stormy. The description of the monsoon session, beginning today (July 21), will be no different.

This is the description for the year 2003. Now, I should indeed be “feeling lucky” that three years since then, the human kind has evolved. We won’t be as barbarous this time. It is highly likely that the first bill to be introduced would be the quota for OBCs in the institutes which were spared of it till now and it will get passed very peacefully. Unanimously!! Yeah, the beginning of the session would not be stormy at all. This whole band of lame politicians will succumb to the frustrated ambitions of one of their lot. And we’ll watch peacefully? May be not. We’ll protest, protest, protest, protest… And then vanish into obscurity or just stay on the pages of history, but without being able to make a difference…

The days of IITK suddenly become alive again. Looks like we got the exposure to real world in more ways than one. The exactly parallel behaviour of certain people in administration there is coming before my eyes. Only that the scope then was much smaller. While the problem we have now is parallel, the solution can not be parallel. The solution we came up with then is just not scalable. What then? I do not know if tomorrow will be a better day, if tomorrow my mind will work better towards a solution. But today is a day of frustration, a day of pure frustration, a day of helplessness, a day of feeling useless, a day of feeling betrayed, a day of bitterness all over, a day when I feel like treating those who want to be called backward (and their supporters too) as precisely that – backward – mentally backward – and not as an equal, when I wish I could just disown the society go away somewhere, to a place more reasonable!!

Today is a black day!

Technorati : Frustration, IIT, India, Lame Politicians, OBC, Reservation