more. experience

The more. Megestore offered me another chance to write about the consumer awareness.
Recently, I went their outlet in ORR, mahadevapura where I purchased the monthly groceries along with toiletries. One of the item I purchased was diaper for my kid and the MRP is Rs.90/=. On returning home, I checked the bill and to my shock I was charged Rs.172/= for this item.
I called their customer care number but no answer. The mail to the customer care returned with server failure.
Finally, after two days, I got someone answering in the customer care number. He asked me to get the bill and the item to get the refund.
They eventually refunded me, however they are aware of the mistake happened during their input to the but it was not rectified by the time I got my refund.

How many of us, cross check the bill against the MRP or the offer price ? Are these people liable to inform the customer about the mistake in bill like recall in automobile industry.

However, in reality and in India, consumer have to be more aware and awake.

Inflating profits - Is a common practice among companies

Satyam which was in the limelight for inflating profit was not a sole player. The rediff article says most of the public sector units have inflated the profit but not to the extend of Satyam.

Quirkology

Quirkology, maybe sounds like a funniest branch of Science. Wiseman has conducted a lot of research to find out tiny, unknown links that exists between anything. How your birth month affects your thinking and career development. One of his research says, people born between March and August would think better than people in other months. The reason as he quotes..'perhaps, the way of bringing up the kids by parents might be different during Summer and Winter.

Another experiment says the lovers tends to underestimate the time elapsed when they were disrupted during their meeting after a long day's work.

Couple of other experiments, how one's name affects their career development. He says people with not so common name have better productivity than people with common names.

Checkout the website for more interesting findings.

Metallic foods and hygienic outlets

Today's article in Hindu alerts you about the reality of pollution damages. Owing to pollution created from sewage waste,industrial waste and other contamination from the city, the fruits and vegetables cultivated near urban area has heavy level of metal traces. Is organic food an alternate for this?. No since organic food is still dearer for most of the people. Government should take stringent action to reduce the water contamination.

Also, the waxing of Apples and the riping mechanism of mangoes using calcium carbide is another concern.

Another article, reflects the miserable state of the health department. The article points out that BBMP has only 4 health inspectors to inspect the food quality in 25000 eatouts in bangalore.

Believe 'ignorance is bliss'

ATM non-functioning

I used to draw money from the ICICI bank ATM in our office premise using the Citibank Card. However, for the past 4 weeks all the request had been declined. Even with persistent reporting/queries the problem was not solved. Eventually, this is not the only case. Today an article in 'The Hindu' talks about the same issue with other banks. Would this be a collusion among banks which has more ATMs, after the government order to allow withdrawing money from any ATM ?.

Not a good replacement

Australia, once a unvanquishable team in cricket world, now have a keeper in Haddin who replaced Gilchrist, an outstanding sports person. Does Haddin make a perfect replacement for Gilchrist. I believe he never does. Probably with the batting skill in due course, not the sportsmanship of Gilchrist. Yesterday's incident reflects a bad state of cricket they are encouraging in Australia.

Nomophobia & Ringxiety

Puzzled with the title. These are the uneasy sense a person develops on a prolong usage of mobile phone. Do you fear about losing your mobile contact if you asked to get rid of your mobile?. Have you been hearing your mobile ring tone when it was not ringing!!! That's ringxiety.

Not only we are getting ourselves funky mobile but also funky feelings.

Listerine - Good or Bad

An article in BusinessWorld, which corroborates the long standing hearsay that using alcohol based mouthwash will increase the oral cancer. The research was done by an Australian university, claims that the probability of oral cancer increases with longer usage of Listerine. Moreover, the university suggested to ban the selling of 'Listerine' from the grocery shops and made available only in medical shops only on physician's recommendation. Will Johnson & Johnson respond positively ?

Slum Dog Millionaire

Winning 4 golden globe award, the movie got the attention from around the world. It's simplicity and fast pacing screenplay attributed to its success.Based on the novel 'Q & A' by Vikas Swarup. It's really surprising some not so competent movie being nominated for Oscar. Though happy that compatriot being nominated, I personally feel the movie missed out the stir the book created.

Power Theft

In India, it looks like Power theft is quite unavoidable. Today's article in HINDU about the power theft by the Airtel's service provider for the erected tower was quite high. Power theft affects the government revenue and also affects the every consumer who also pays for the unaccounted power usage. Probably, government should think about privatization of the power distributed similar to the DISCOMs in Delhi, which is quite successful in revenue generation, reduced power tariff and also reduced power theft.

Democrazy

The horse trading of MP's happening in the Central is absolute idiotic. The trading demand by the convicted MP Shibhu soren to get the Coal ministry is extremum. Great economist like Manmohan Singh falling into the hands of dirty politician would take India backwards. Central government trying to avert the collapse by getting support from the parties to which they lost in the states. A shameful democracy. The article published in Independent, is a disgrace for us.

Do we really need an election in our country ?. Anyways, the opposition parties join hands to form the government by horse trading (so called post-poll alliance). Why to waste the large amount of money in elections?.

Who is the culprit?

An interesting article in Deccan Herald caught my eyes. The plaintiff said that he received a email asking him to be a partner (with the sender) to claim her father's deposit with Scotland Bank. He promptly accepted and deposited some Rs.7 lakhs with the account the person's attorney(as they say) mentioned. Not able to face the next demand of 8.5 lakhs he foxed the attorney and made him to send his representative to collect the cash. Apparently he was caught by the police based on the complaint.

The plaintiff would have taken this matter through legally or would have ignored. But Greed wins and he deposited the money. Who is responsible for his ignorance or his ill minded to become richer soon. He paid for his evil mind, I would say..

Police should have taken action against the plaintiff for not taking any legal action before he acts on the email.

Loser's talk

In a recent interview by Chelsea manager Avram Grant, he talked really like a loser. He was not as good as Jose Mourinho and the success he got so far in this season was purely because of the team.
Stop talking like a loser dude.In sports, 'to err is human' suits more.

Democrazy

Yes, the topic reflects how the Indian political scenario is being viewed. Though nothing different from rest of the world, it is how everyone perceives it.

True, our politicians are riding and enjoying the power either by creating or by fueling the existing caste/religion diversification. To move out from this, we need to know why our political system is more towards caste/religion. Rooting to ancient days, a strong domination of landlords(a large dominant caste represented here) and their suppression on strivers would have seeded this scenario. From this time, our politician could not think of anything to get the vote just to segregate the people with caste and religion. The caste-based and religion based politics has a great history starting from the church intervention in age-old politics to latest caste-based reservations.

Do we change the face of politics to focus more on grassroot issues? A more debatable topic from blogathonindia. This is perhaps more doable in saying or writing, however quite difficult to achieve. Changing the out-dated constitutional law would be quite powerful, but this solution is not feasible since the change of constitutional law again depends on politicians.This won't happen (office of profit bill). With every election, we have atleast one party getting created based on caste. The Election commission should ban the party which is canvassing the people on caste-based, also should ban the party if it could not claim some minimum percent of the votes.This might put a check for any new party formation based on caste.

We can't change the existing politicians, however can inject new bloods with really altogether new set of ideologies which does not include caste,race, religion etc. I can sense this as quite happening, with the rise of party like lok-paritran.

Food Distance

With my little retentivity, I can remember studying about seasonal fruits and vegetables. But, now when I visit any of the giant retail chain stores, I can see Washington Apples, China pears, apples from Australia and New Zealand, China orange are lined in the shelf. Colourful. With globalization, not only humans but also the food they consume is traveling. Indians consume food with little food distance when compared to global powers like US and other European countries. However, the high buying power of Indians will bridge this gap very soon.

There were lots of debates going on, about the preservatives being used to keep these fruits fresh. I read an article which details about the toxic elements present in keeping the apples shiny.

This might be the right time for the government to take appropriate step in regulating the food distance.

Blogathon

Blogathon - concept by the people and for the people who love blogging is a great platform to exchange our views on various subjects. Believe I have the same enthusiasm during blogathon and will contribute for it.

Happy Blogging... Enjoy blogging.

You can get info from : www.blogathon.in

India Budget 2008 - Is a moral hazard ?

No one can deny the charismatic appeal of the India Budget. As soon as the Parliament's Budget Session started, each and every news channel interviewed people ranging from entrepreneur to CEOs to housewives and to college grads and telecasted their expectations from the budget. This time the Finance Minister put the elections in the top leaving the rest underneath it.

The usually affected salaried class were more beneficial this time (a great relief of ~20K for a middle class individual tax payer), and around 40 million farmers getting benefited by the loan waiver of Rs.60,000 crores (A huge money).

I personally think that this waiver should be a setback for the productivity. Instead of waiving it off, they would have given consideration for small or zero interest rate, in which case the people would have valued the money lent.

Now, do the farmers who had paid some part of the same either by selling their lands or some assets reap any benefit from this?

This waive off will definitely affects the moral of the farmers who had the intention of paying the loan back. Now people will back off from paying everytime either expecting or demanding the government to waive off the loan in future.

If atleast part of this loan has been recovered, probably it would have yielded some more relief to all tax-payers either individual or corporate. Isn't true?

I am not against any benefit or relief scheme however Nothing will be valued if provided free is what I think.

Mr.Sujatha (a) Rangarajan

Probably for most of the people who know Mr. Sujatha, today would have been the dismal day after knowing about his demise. Though, he was old and suffering from several ailments, the news was shocking. His demise is a great loss for Indian Science and Tamil literature world.

Having great depth in the Tamil literature, he had written a number of great novels and stories. He pioneered the field of science fiction novels in Tamil. Spread the knowledge of science by writing lot of columns in various magazines. His 'En. etharkku. eppadi' was a great work in explaining the world of science to common people in a lucid way. His work of coining equivalent tamil words for new science words was a great effort.

Having vast knowledge in almost all fields and an admiring personality, he inspired lot of people to learn and also cultivated the habit of reading among them.

In the cine field, he was unparalleled for his great dialogs as in the movies like 'Gentleman' and 'Anniyan'.

His loss left a void place which could not be filled by anyone

Consumerism

With more retail stores are in line, the success of them lies with the service they provide. I had a strange experience with one of the leading retailers of Spencer's located near my area. I purchased one kg of 'Picric' basmati rice which says buy 1 get 1 free. Thinking that the free rice pack will be given near the billing counter, I did not pick the extra pack. While billing, the store person next to the billing person said "It has a free pack" only to get a reply "Don’t tell, he did not pick the extra one. Leave it". After billing, I told him that I want to talk to store manager and he immediately said I am new to this store and I am under training and I don't know about the offer". An insane behaviour never expected from one of the reputed retailers.

Will India wake up on consumerism!!

Democrazy

In democratic country everyone has their rights to voice their concern, however the recent auto strike in Bangalore demanding for increase in minumum fare and fare per kilometer is something as a general public I would strongly contend.
The minimum fare and the rest are for the auto-drivers who are abide by the meter rules. Most of the bangalore auto-drivers, does not follow the rules, then I could not understand why they protest. Probably trying to legitimise their exorbitant fare demand.

Jokes apart, most of the auto in Bangalore runs in CNG and the existing fare is very much yield them the profit(from some articles in today's 'The Hindu' ) and could not understand the reason for the bandh.

Believe it is just an outcome of threat they might face once the Tata NANO is out.