Sept 7th Weekly Lore

Quotable Quotes of the week

Many ask why i joined politics and then why i left it. I joined because i was asked to and i left because i was inadequate for the job- Amitabh Bachchan

When you do well in sports the bar gets raised. If you cannot raise the bar , you have no business being here - Vijay Mallya after his Force India car finished second at the Belgian GP

Only a leader who loves his people selflessly and unconditionally will reap success - Sri Sri Pooja Ravi Shankar , Spiritual leader




Different Strokes --

Stroke 1 The Butter Story --

Most of you must have been aware of the shortage of the government made and sold Butter sold through various outlets , that is a key ingredient in any household in the south. The shortage has been due to short supplies, as well as rumours floating thick around other Butter/ Ghee manufacturers buying the government brand and badging them as their own product!!

To ensure my household has enough supplies ( i do not consume this product at all ) i walk in to outlets around where i live during my morning walk and ask for a half Kg pack -- No chance -- Not available is a ready answer -- As i kept doing this enquiry over the past six to eight weeks , one outlet close to my residence gave a new twist -- Leave your mobile number , we will call when we get stock -- I took no serious note of this request by the person at the Kiosk -- But did write down my wife's mobile number and her name -- It was pleasant shock to get a call this Tuesday ( i was at home as well ) at four in the evening from the kiosk person that Butter stock had arrived and he has reserved a half kg pack for me -- Super customer service simply because
- the stock would have been sold anyway without the call to me -- such was the demand factor
- The person called and spent money to do this --
Outstanding -- I told my wife to thank him for this great customer connect effort which was not needed -

Stroke 2 -- The Broadband Service Provider

I have been using the services of this ISP for more than eight years -- they have been consistent in their service if not outstanding - No troubles --My wife can surf the net , I do can do email , my daughter could dress her Barbie -- It served the purpose -- of course , the service went down at times but was fixed quickly and efficently. I changed residence , the connection was restored in no time.

With this background , early July the service went down -- I called their call center and was informed it will take a week --A week later, it was moved by ten more days and ten days later it was moved indefinitely -- Also getting to their call centre person to talk was becoming a nightmare -- You call and will hear a voice that tells you " your waiting time is 3 minutes" but even after 25 minutes, the call will not get connected --

I decided to move, changed my ISP ( who again was a surprise in terms of this installation time -- it was 15 minutes flat ) -- I then disconnected the old modem , wrote a letter out and went to the office where i had a surprise -- there were at least 10 people who were doing what i was doing -- Returning modems and asking refund of deposit -- the ISP in question was prepared for this -- they had a standard form , ready to fill in , acknowledgement was given in 5 minutes with a feedback that deposits will be returned in 30 days --I asked the person in the counter why they were withdrawing the service -- He said , frequent cable disconnection by known miscreants ( he named them as well ) and inability to lay cables to match the speed of disconnection by the miscreants -- i felt sad about this but i could not do anything but to sympathise with him and his other staff who i believe will be loosing their positions -- But what impressed me was the clear process that was in place to handle the exit -- that i am sure is going to help them if they come back to Chennai-
Incidentally , the deposit came home to me on the 30th day !!

Stroke 3-- My Fuel station

I am a long time user of this particular outlet -- As long as the Broadband service provider -- Most of the employees are known to me by name -- Very happy with the service , small exchange of pleasantries and so on -- It was no surprise that i went to the bunk last Thursday and put in around 42 litres of premium diesel in to my new lease car that arrived home the previous night -- By the time , i drove 600 metres to reach my residence , the engine groaned , moaned and made all kind of funny noises - A new car cannot behave like that -- I called in service , who were able to quickly tell us that the fuel pumped in had huge content of water -- The new car was towed out and my family was upset and aghast --

I tried to get in touch with the Fuel supply company at the highest level to complain -- It took me lot of effort and time to get to the right person in the company to complain -- Since they are Government owned , there is protocol and passing the buck type answers -- I would not give up and managed to get the right level of personnel involved . I was not the only one -- there were more vehicles -- One vehicle's engine seized at the bunk itself-

Thanks to quick action by the Ford Service Team , the fuel was drained out of the car and the car came back the next day ( Friday late night ) --

The same day night ( Thursday ), i went to the bunk and all the employees gathered around to apologise -- they agreed it was a grave error-- the previous night while refuelling to the tanks was being completed , the lids were not screwed in tight leading to water entering in to the ducts and pipes from the overnight rains - Coupled with this , the density was not checked in the morning ( this is the first thing that a petrol station needs to do before commencing supplies but they hardly do this ). Carelessness on part of the Supervisor at that shift lead to more water than fuel . Unspite of all this , I had the guts to fill in my other car with fuel . Did not know which bunk to go was a reason as well !!

On Saturday , officials of the petroleum company , came to the bunk , refuelled my new car and paid me costs of the draining of the tank and towing -- I came back home thinking that the incident was closed -- No --

Got a call from one of the Supervisors that they wanted to see me -- I agreed -- They requested me to get back the fuel that was drained and stored at the service station -- the fuel now was filtered and could be reused -- i wanted to know why -- He said , it will save them some of the costs of the damage that has been debited to the Supervisor of that particular who was held responsible for the negligence -- they got two cans and i took them to the service stations and got them back the fuel -- They said they will filter and carefully reuse it !!


End of the day , i got my problem fixed ( looks like ) but a pretty bad experience -- I can imagine how our engines run with all the adultered fuel that we get and we always want more mileage -- Possible ? Not with the kind of quality systems that exist in getting us good fuel


Also read up something on the same topic that you may be interested
http://www.kiruba.com/2009/06/cleartrip-episode-my-experience.html
http://www.kiruba.com/2009/06/cleartrip-experience-part-2.html