• Samsung GALAXY Y DUOS Product Image (4)
    Samsung GALAXY Y DUOS Product Image (4) (Photo credit: renaissancechambara)

    Last year I traded in my tried and tested Nokia for a Smart phone that proved too smart for me to handle. My Samsung Duos Y ( whatever it is……) had a dual SIM card which turned out to be my undoing because a three day stay in Italy while the phone was downloading Apps in the background cost me Rs 9,000! Peeved with this unnecessary expense, I was already regretting buying this phone when earlier this year I found my battery draining within hours and worse still, the phone getting too hot to handle.

    So I went down to the Samsung Cafe which is down the road from my house and was told to produce the invoice failing which I should tell them the exact date of purchase. Now this is as idiotic as looking for a needle in a haystack but I did tell them that no sooner did I buy the phone than the cost came down and worse still, the model was pulled out a while later.

    I was told that the problem could only be solved at the Service Centre , the location of which  the Cafewallahs had absolutely no idea. Once again miffed by this indifferent customer service, I went back home and luckily found the original packing of the phone and marched back to the shop. The shop attendant looked at the box as though I had pilfered it from their showroom and was surprised that I had kept it. Rather reluctantly he traced the transaction and offered to give me a printed copy of the receipt the next day after 12.

    I chose to ignore this till last month it developed a new problem. From time to time the Service provider dropped my service and I had to remove the SIM, rub it down and put it back. I tried this several times till I finally changed the slot . I also went to the Service provider who told me he could do nothing with the phone but only find out if the SIM was faulty. And if the SIM was faulty, I needed to apply for a new one and since I was not the primary subscriber, I needed a letter of authority along with address proof of primary subscriber and myself.

    I just couldn’t manage any more of this run around and decided to finally act the helpless, Memsaab and put it in my husband’s lunch basket and asked him to deal with it. He of course sent it off to their IT Dept and I duly got a call from the concerned person. After explaining the problem I told him not to call me again but to just get the phone fixed or better still replaced. I am sick and tired of my Smart phone and long for my good old NOKIA which was just a phone.

    But till I get my phone back either replaced or repaired, I am disconnected from the world and am happy for it. I had one whole day without having to worry where the phone was kept and not worry about checking for messages from time to time. I didn’t have to worry about losing it, having it stolen, dropping it or even having a conversation in whispers , straining to hear what the other person was saying over a tenuous connection , guiltily looking at it in conversation or trying to read messages without spectacles or worse still trying to answer it with a swipe before the caller disconnected!

    In fact, I had such a stress free day that I am quite willing to go without the mobile phone for the rest of my life…..

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  • To invest or not to invest

    This Saturday I was given the tedious task of tracking down the family investment portfolio. Like everything else in my life, our investment pattern has a life of its own and we find ourselves investing in fits and starts. Like most investors we get inspired by those whose millions have become trillions and exit the moment we find someone’s wealth vanishing with the declining NIFTY. Granted, this loss of wealth is often notional, it is enough to send us into panic mode. Anyway, this post is not about investing but about tracking down investments.

    Tracking down investments


    The first and simplest step is to contact the broker who gets you involved with investing. Naturally even the broker needs 2-3 days to respond and after you get his statement, you reconcile it with your own by crosschecking with the different Fund houses. Now this is the tedious part.

    All Fund houses make it sound easier than making apple pie. All you have to do is contact them

    • by email
    • by phone which is a toll free number
    • by yourself – tracking your investments online

    Now I prefer the second option since I find that emails very often get rejected by the Fund House server or land up in their Spam folders. The third option is the most frustrating because the Website designers design a web page that is simply impossible to navigate : and for some strange reason no contact number ever works and if it does, you get hooked on to another answering machine.

    The priceless experience of the toll free number

    All Fund houses make it seem so easy to dial the toll free number. If you are dialing from a land line, it is well nigh impossible and if you are dialing from a handheld mobile – your hand eye coordination needs to be defter than that of a neurosurgeon.

    1. Welcome to XYZ Fund house intones a deep sexy female voice
    For information in English press 1
    For information in Hindi press 2
    For information in Marathi press 3……. you get the drift. The menu options allow you to speak to a customer service agent in EVERY Indian language.

    2. If you are an existing customer press 1 else press 2
    3. Please enter your folio number followed by #* or any other key the machine deems fit.
    4. If you want to know the NAV press 1
    5. If you want to know the latest value press 2……. and the options go on
    6. Else if you want to speak to a customer service agent press 9

    By the time you respond to these instructions your operation has either timed out or not registered since you are on a crappy phone line.

    Then if you do happen to press option 6 you wait for a bit till the voice intones : Sorry all our customer service agents are currently busy. Your call is important to us, please hold the line or call back shortly…….and you foolishly wait for a few minutes till the line automatically gets cut off.

    But if it is your lucky day and you do get a human voice to attend to you, brace yourself for another harrowing experience of talking to the person on the other end. With all the static and poor connectivity of cell phones, you land up screaming your PAN Number, your date of birth, your address and even identifying yourself ( i.e. spouse, significant other, parent, sibling, joint holder) till it is no longer a secret to all those who can hear your call.

    And the worst is of course when you are told that the client details do not exist in their system and you see your real money just vanish in the virtual world!

    Help


    Dear Fund House


    Please note that I am not a distributor but a plain and simple investor, the key work being SIMPLE.
    Please make investing more customer friendly the way customers think it should be.


    Desperately yours

  • Mango time

    My Mumbai summer can be a killer

    With sweat dripping down your back in rivulets2

    Your shirt sticks to you like second skin

    And you squint your eyes  small in the glare of the sun

    The  sea breeze that blows is sticky warm and sticky

    With the taste of salt that comes through the air

    Yet the joys of summer are packed in the sweet, velvet taste of Mango

     

     

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