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

Comments

Anonymous said…
The best thing about this blog is its screenplay. You gift wrapped small incidents in life, narrated them really well and even picked a management message out of it.
6:53 AM
Venky said…
Sri- 3 interesting titbits made this blog curios to read..The fuel issue was particularly interesting and showed you were prepared to go to the last mile to get the issue resolved. Most of us would have probably boycoted the bunk, if we had such an experience, but your feedback must have created a process improvement at the bunk. By the way, which bunk is this? Is this the one opposite to the old Concorde motors?
4:30 PM
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