Mind in words…

A crack at understanding the meaning of what goes in my mind

Archive for Stories

Mumbai home hunting and Society high handedness

June 15, 2008 at 9:42 am · Filed under Life, Mumbai, Stories, Thoughts and tagged: , , ,

This experience is of hunting for a house in mumbai on rent. Well its common knowledge that rents in mumbai are the highest in the country (considering comparing it across all other metros is enough), and thats exactly the reason why even owners with sub standard houses are expecting a mine full of green paper from tenants.

Brokers and Landlords work in tandem to raise the prices every year. In fact what really happens is that , most of the houses on rent can only be rented through brokers. Now comes the worst part, owners expect say X amount from their houses . What some brokers do is , forge a deal with the owner saying i will surely get you X ( X itself is pretty high !) but in case i get anything above X ill keep that share out of the rent for the next 11 months. So , the broker gets you the booty which you want and he keeps anything hes able to achieve above that. This is one of the reasons why prices keep soaring.

Another reason for high prices – the borkerage, which usually ranges from 1 to 1.5 months rent. So, higher the rent, higher the brokerage thus burning a hole into the tenants pocket.

A word of caution though : This experience is limited to Andheri and surrounding areas and was limited to only 2 months of hunting for livable spaces which were fully furnished (Though me and my flatmates also saw many unfurnished and semi furnished places as well).

We tried to do something different when we were out hunting, we asked the broker to get us a good deal and fix the brokerage before hand ;) . But he was not the one to fall into our trap. While we wanted the best deal , he was too concerned about making money. Reason : Demand has outstripped constricted supply in this overly congested city of mumbai.

Another reason is that some of the landlords keep their houses vacant so that some inexperienced idiot comes along and pays them a stupidly high sum which had no corelation to the plush (haha plush !!) house he/she got.

We were looking for some good 2 BHK fully furnished houses in Andheri East area (rents varying from 28K to 45 K) and infact in the end got one house which we all liked but the demand for rent was huge ….wasnt fitting our budget. Infact it dint have ACs , TV and Sofas but owner agreed to out them in for total package of 29 K but when we said we dont need ACs he said the reductyion in rent would not be in same proportion to increas ein rent .  We gave in as we had to move in quickly or else we wouldve found ourselves on the street ;) .

Now when we took our stuff to move in we were suprised to find an idiot standing between us and the house askinmg us to produce the permission from the Managing committee of the Society for moving in. We were suprised , asked our broker and the owner about this stupid demand of his. They had no clue . We were stranded with all our stuff in front of the society in full throttle mumbai rain and this bugger wont relent. In fact he directed the guard not to allow us in and left on his bike to god knows where.

We finally were allowed to keep our stuff when our broker pleaded with him on phone but werent allowed to move in till we got the Managing committee’s permission.

What perplexed us was that we had Police verification documents with us , the Agreement signed between us and the owner , infact these 2 documents would have sufficed to prove that we were no ruffians who would disturb the tranquility of this society ! I still am waiting to see what the Managing commitee members would add value to in addition to the police verification. In fact ill have to wait for another week to move in as all Managing committee members could not assemble at the same time in a short span of time.

Im so pissed right now that in case they ask me my antecedents , ill make sure i get theirs too recorded in front of me. I also have the right to know whether these managing committee members are fit to live in the same society as mine ;)

This high handedness is unwarranted. Hope people realise that the people in mumbai are known to be cooperative and cordial. This reputation is taking a beating day by day.

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TATAs and their pathetic Indicom – TATA Indicom

November 4, 2007 at 6:40 am · Filed under Customer Care, Frustration, Internet in India, Stories, TATA, TATA INDICOM and tagged: , , , ,

This is a true story of a hapless customer treated like dirt by a company (read TATA Indicom) which has ambitious plans of taking on the Reliance and Bhartis of telecom but no systems to carry it through. I still think it’s perfectly all right to dream big but don’t just be the Mungerilals who just dream big, be the Sam Waltons who dream big and have even bigger and stronger systems in place to back their dreams to reality.

It all started about a month and a half back when I was posted in the interiors of the country for a project. The need for a mobile internet connection arose and what else, with a brilliant Kajol trying to sell you a TATA Indicom connection, I was ‘pull’ed by buying one. But I did not buy it from the place where I was posted – Munger in Bihar. I bought it from a certified shop of TATA Indicom in Delhi.

The connection got activated in Delhi within a day in Delhi but I was not able to download much from the connection. Next day I landed in Patna and tried the connection. The black beauty –“A USB Modem” failed to connect and the error message popped “Error 721: Could not connect to the remote computer”. Next day when I reached Munger, I called up customer care of Indicom and tried to see what the reason for this weird message was. I was told to wait as the customer care executive (from now on CCE) wanted to verify my details and then she started speaking about various settings which I should check. On promptly doing that, there was no success. I was told that a complaint would be lodged and within 12 working hours my complaint would be resolved by a service engineer.

I was happy about the system of 12 working hours. But I soon came to know that if the complaint was not attended to or not resolved in those 12 hours then the complaint would lapse and again you would have to lodge a complaint for the same error and in another 12 hours it would get resolved. Such a system would’ve been made by a person with an IQ not exceeding 1 digit for sure. Even that i’m not too sure.

Another amazing process which is engrained in this company’s philosophy – “Treat thy customer as a waiting time machine, keep passing the buck to the other department and wash your hands off”. I must have abused the poor girls a lot all this time with my blood pressure shooting up all the time.

No net connectivity with a damn demanding project in site. I was in for a rude shock from the company. Next thing I come to know in my regular chats with the company CCEs is that my connection has been BARRED as the verification of my address was NEGATIVE.

Hmmm ….I wondered how this was possible. I had given my permanent address where I lived along with my parents for the last 14 years or so. I asked them the address mentioned in their system. To my horror, it was a typo error all on their end that created an address which was not in Delhi. Although I had documentary proof that I had provided it right to them.

After getting that corrected by going to a TVH in Noida on my next visit to Delhi, nothing changed. Again contacted the CCE and she said a Service Engineer would call me. I said fine. He called to my surprise. He asked me to get the SIM changed at my cost and things would be fine.

On my visit to Mumbai 2 days later, I got the SIM changed and the Tata Authorized Dealer TVH, Dadar guys changed it and supposedly got my number loaded on to it. But till the time I was there at the TVH I did not get activated. On being reassured that since the number was of Delhi, it would take a bit of time and you can go home till then. I was happy that finally my problem would get solved. Nothing happened, the problem remained.

I again called up the CCE and this time I was told that as the SIM was changed, now their must be a problem with the Modem. I said buggers, tell me what to do. They said, a Service Engineer would visit you in Munger in Bihar and get it changed. I said fine but would it be feasible for him to visit this place as this place doesn’t have even a TATA dealership, only franchisee shops. I was told not to worry; they would send someone from Patna or Jamshedpur. Nobody turned up and I got calls from people from Chandigarh, Chennai, Jamshedpur all TATA service center guys asking me what had happened. All the while I explained and explained nothing happened.

Cutting a longer story short, now I got a call from a collection center saying your card was barred as the credit limit has exceeded. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH….. I didn’t even get a tiny chance to use the card and the credit limit had exceeded. The lady talked to me saying pay up please as you have used the card and I exploded like an Al Qaeda suicide bomber. She put the phone down.

A small note on this credit limit thing :I have a plan of 1500 rental with a free usage of 5 GB and subsequent usage charge of Rs 2 / MB. The credit limit was 700 which later got hiked to 2500 but this 2500 is not above the 5GB limit. This actually means that I can only download around 1250 MB (1250MB *2 per MB = 2500)  within my free usage limit till my credit limit gets exhaiusted and within a month I have to payup when I should not actually be doing so. A complete mockery of promises made in the market. I’ve ended up hating Kajol for the convincing face she makes up to sell the Black beauty to all of us tech savvy Indians.

I had enough, I again lodged a complaint and then went straight to a True Value Hub of theirs in Gurgaon and to my surprise a guy called Vivek listened to my frustrations very patiently and was the best CCE that I had spoken to till now. He did all he could and now the amount of bill is completely reversed and even told me that the Mumbai guys cannot change the SIM from Delhi and it was surprising to him to find out this lack of information with the TATA owned dealership. He told me to write a letter to Customer care manager to back his email to him.

Now finally the card according to him has been activated and once I go to Delhi it will switch on there.

I’m still waiting for that to happen otherwise ill have to continue this story

 

Moral of the story is:

DONOT BUY ANY TATA INDICOM PRODUCTS. THIS IS NOT A ONE OFF CASE

WHEN THE SYSTEMS ARE SCREWED IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE

Buy any other brand but don’t but Tata Indicom. Or else you’ll end up writing such stories 

 

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Behind the Wheels – A Short story

May 16, 2007 at 5:16 pm · Filed under Stories

It all happened behind the wheels. A young man in his 20’s was driving home after having a drink with a few of his friends. They were a group of college mates fresh with gleaming hopes for a new dawn that awaited them. Vilas had a bit of heady feeling after a few mix and match drinks but was aware of his surroundings. So, he decided to drive back home.

He said goodbye to his friends and started the journey back in his one year old blood red sedan which his father had bought for him. He started down the road from the pub and on his way say a dark grey hatchback swerving reklessly down the road.

Although he had quite a few pegs down his throat but he still could make out it wasn’t him or the road, but the car in front which was dilly dallying. He was at such a speed that he crossed the car and in a fit of rage showed them the crooked middle  finger on the way. Vilas felt angered at the middle aged men in the car who were drinking along with cigarettes in their hand. “How irresponsible could people get?”  he thought to himself. He was not even aware of what was coming-from behind.

“bang….thud….bang”…no he wasn’t dreaming..it was his car which was making all these sounds and it wasn’t voluntary on its part. It was being forced by another one from behind. Someone was crashing deliberately onto his car. As he looked down the mirror all he could see was the image of 2 men signalling him to stop.They-appeared to be the same men whom he had signalled with his inspired fingers moments back. He coulnt see their faces clearly though.

With road rage so apparent in the city , Vilas thought to give them a run. He was stunned by their audacity at first but soon realised that they were under influence of Alcohol. They just wanted revenge for an act of insult to them.

But Vilas was not going to  stop. he too had been under the influence of Alcohol. So the chase began. Amidst traffic signals , moving traffic both cars were vrooming and nearby vehicles were honking crazy at the rash driving of these 2 cars.

The men wern’t relenting nor was Vilas going to give up chase….Vilas made an attempt to overtake the cars from the left . That was the last mistake he could do that night, as the car in front braked and swerved to close the path of freedom for Vilas. Vilas stopped. there was no way he could move or escape. The burly men cme out of their car and so did Vilas. As Vilas stood up to fight the men , both of them took hold of his arms and …..

One of them started speaking ” you were showing us the middle…” huh….”saale ne bhi daaru pi rakhi hai re jogi”…

The other one supposedly Jogi said, “Chal re bana peg saath main peete hain..Peeyega kakke?”

To this Vilas who was already heady agreed. “What better than to find 2 more inoxicated men in the middle of the night , have one hell of a race in town and get premium scotch in return”

 

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Stories

May 16, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Stories, Stupid posts, Thoughts

mind races ahead and thinks of writing fascinating 2 para stories..Lets see how much of it would be down in this space ‘o’ mine. Night is descending fast and its raining outside. Whats going to happen next is just another guess waiting to be taken!

At night ull read me writing to u …writing a story for you to listen. Can’t say if you can read it to your children but yes u can read it?

ciao till then …3 hours to go before parents gooff to sleep and im upto my mischevious self ;)

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