ICICI Bank and its customer vexations April 9, 2009
Posted by arunpurohit in Banking, Big Fight in a small Dog.1 comment so far
A customer requested a final statement of accounts for homeloan 30 days after last EMI debit:
The mail from ICICI customer care :
From: Customer Care [mailto:customercare@icicibank.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 8:00 PM
To: Ms X
Subject: RE:’ICICICARE=033-604-357′ Regarding Home loan (account number – LBXXX0000XXXXXX\8)
Dear Ms.X,
You will pro-actively receive the Final Income Tax Statement for the financial year 2008-2009 to your communication address in the month of May, 2009.
Sincerely.
Chatur Siyar
Customer Service Officer
ICICI Bank Limited
Now see the response from customer
Dear Mr Chatur Siyar,
It pains to see educated people butchering wonderful words mercilessly. I am peeved to see that you have used the word’ proactive’ in as incongruous manner as possible. Just to refresh, please see the definition
pro·ac·tive or pro-ac·tive
(prō-āk’tĭv) Pronunciation Key
adj. Acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty; anticipatory: proactive steps to prevent terrorism.
pro·ac’tion n., pro·ac’tive·ly adv., pro·ac’tive·ness, pro’ac·tiv’i·ty n.
As I understand, the opposite of proactive is reactive..
What I understand from proactive is: Sending the final statement before the customer feels a need for it. ( Race Horse)
What I understand from reactive is : Sending the statement when customer demands it. ( Work horse)
What I see worth retribution is : Delayed sending of statement by months even when some one asks ( Washerman’s companion)
Where your response and attitude fits is for you and your organization to judge. 
The last crap I would like to read from you is that for all EMIs we paid through ECS till 10Mar09 ,Some Babu in your organization will take 2 months to sign
Please let me know your thoughts on this.
Now see the response Bank
This scathing mail shook the sleepy Customer care : The result is :
Office of Head Service Quality
We refer to your e-mail of April 10, 2009 addressed to Nodal Officer.
Kindly refer the attached copy of the Final Income Tax Statement for the financial year 2008-2009.
Sincerely,
Customer Service Manager
Siemens PLM Chess Championship 2008 , Pune April 17, 2008
Posted by arunpurohit in Big Fight in a small Dog, Chess.1 comment so far
The Warriors
Subsequent to my semi final victory the stage was set for Finals. I had heard from my peer that one of the semi finalists was an extremely good player of chess. He was champion in 2005 and 2006. I decided to gather more information about him. The first step was to find out at what level in organisation he was in. I searched the corporate directory and was amazed to know that he was at a level which was equivalent to My Boss’s Boss. Further , finding out that he worked on Finite Element mesh abstraction raised his aura in my mind. FEA is something I always dreamt of using and here was the guy who was developing software to solve FEA problems.
The Goliath
I spoke to him on communicator and fixed up a time to speak to him . He was warm and immediately gave time. I tried to know more about him while he explored my Air Force background and chess passion. During conversation he also told me that her was Finalist in Chess Championship held at IIT Kanpur in 200x?. With a score of 7.5 he had 0.5 adavantage over the other finalist. After around 35 moves his opponent offered a draw but he declined. The adversary came back to win the game and he was Runners up. He told me a lot of anecdotes on Chess and appeared pretty passionate about the game. By the time we ended our conversation , i had already kept him on a high pedestal and thought winning against him was beyond my capabilities. A descent fight would be good enough. In my thoughts I reconciled myself to take pride in the tag of Runners up at the Siemens PLM Chess Championship 2008
David Armoring up
My heart however wanted me to go for the best ever game of my life and play very good attacking chess. I asked my Boss if I could take a day off to prepare for the finals and he gave an instant go ahead.This is what I admire about great managers like him
I spent half the day at home reading chess strategies and commandments and later, I was in office sorting some issues.
The Setting
The final day arrived, the invitation mail was sent to all company persons to watch the match. THe top floor Yoga room was selected for the purpose.The large glass windows showed picturesque hills and also burgeoning skyline of this IT industry hub Hinjewadi of Pune. Some years back Kasparov and Karpov had played their World championship match on the top floor of WTC. The vast skyline the sorroundings gave a feeling which was something like that. At the center of room, the game was set. There were chairs for audience and we expected a decent audience of atleast the guys who had played in the tournament but till the last minute we had no audience other than the organiser, photographer and a security man.
The bigul
We begun right on time and with black pieces i didnt know when i would get a chance to attack. First initial moves we fought for central control and RK was the first one to exchange pieces. I knew i had to be very sharp to get offensive. I started threatening all his center pieces and in the process opened up 2 long diagonasl on which my bishops had a free reign.
Locking Horns
The amount of force Rk accumulated in center was unprecedented. I started working under disguise from this stage onwards. While , i gave him an impression that I will be still attacking the center, my hidden intention was to open an attack on the h(Kingside Rook) file. By this time a large no. of spectators had slowly collected in the hall and the eyeballs started grabbing the war of wits on board . I do not know how many ;but must be close to 20 odds were watching the battle with bated breath. The atmosphere was charged. For all the slaughters on board there were only silent screams.
His h file was weakened as he moved more resources in center. Never before in my life I had seen such big fortification and struggle for control of central squares. While i castled my king to safe position, he decided not to. As the pressure on center mounted, he brought almost 8 pieces to guard his King’s pawn. I diverted my attack on the h file and fourtunately he exchanged a pawn which opened my h file. Now I was ready to mount a mammoth attak on that file . i launched an offensive and ripped open his corner fortification. His king, uncastled ,became vulnerable to my pieces which where highly mobile. With my attack in full force and he was rendered defensive. I found that with each new attack he had to spend more time thinking his defenses. At one stage he wanted to launch counterattack by placing his Knight in side my territory but I promptly nullified it by exchanging it with a bishop. At that stage he was only left with 5 minutes or more where as I had almost 17 minutes to finish. With equal no. of pieces on both sides, I realised even spending some time will secure me a win. But there I was in relentless attacks I was 2 moves away from getting annihilated by his forces. His Queen already making inroads into my h flank
The Mid riff Bared 
I started challenging his King from all directions and drove him out of the shell. With hardly few minutes to go, I found that his Queen was standing alone. I do not know why, I put my Queen in such a place where either he had to move his queen or exchange it. The exchange I calculated would work in my favor as I was in better attacking position. With a series of checks his immediate focus was his King’s most favorable position . He moved his King one step. I was gauging his motive but ..suddenly he screemed- ” Isssssh… ” and I immediately looked back on board. His Queeen was available for capture free. With a swift move I captured it. The hall broke in raptures..there were claps all around . He shook my hands and hurriedly wanted to move.The Champ was dethroned and it was a new beginning for me. The unexpected had happened. The jubiliation started and my first tournament Win was under the belt. This victory has tought me a lot. The discipline, the dedication, the focus, passion, optimism, diligence and parents blessing had all gone into securing this win. This counts amongst one of the happiest days of my life and secures greater committment to perfection in the game. I am just wondering about Kasparov’s latest book – ” Life immitates Chess“ if it does, then …. its lots of good times ahead
Ipod blues annihilated March 6, 2007
Posted by arunpurohit in Big Fight in a small Dog.add a comment
If you think this fiction … take a look … replace that car by an music player and Rs 1 million by Rs 10,000 and you would be surprised that fiction transforms to reality, the product and company which emerge are Ipod and Apple computers.. You start getting echo of numerous blogs across the globe –‘the biggest threat in this world after Bill Gates is Mr Steve Jobs’.. and this is a real incident which happened.. The customer thought, he could not possibly fight the financial muscle of this company.. but he could not fight his conscience too, which was preventing him from giving up… Peeved he thought of, writing blogs every where… sending his story to newspapers, filing a case in consumer redressal forum… send linked email to all his friends across the globe so that people get the right information about the so called great product… Or should he send it to rival Microsoft … and enjoy the mudslinging they do to each other (MS is currently pitching Zune against Iphone).. .
What he did was …. He sent this mail to Asia Zone manager of Apple.. Who finding it tough to handle, escalated the case to Australia. The company was shaken at the prospect of this story going to media and suggested that the customer speak on their two Toll free numbers.. The first number was accessible only by MTNL landlines(Which are like searching a needle in Haystack in this age of Telecom corporatisation). The other number he tried 12 times a day was always connecting to silence which only were adding to his STD expenses and futile efforts… He finally thought of giving up futile calls and requested the company to call him back instead. The company told him point blank that they do not have policy of making outbound calls to customers.
Frustrated, he knew pleading was not taking him anywhere and decided to file a case in Consumer Court on the following day…He also told the company about the same.. Barely , few hours had passed ,that company woke up to the threat of litigation and cost associated to it ..it called up the customer and said they were making an exception and promised replacement of his ipod without any cost .. even though it was outside the initial warranty. The ipod came delivered to him in 2 days flat.. So a great fight for consumer right once again had a happy ending. Hope , people reading this will feel inspired to take up big fights with great organizations when they think they can exploit citizens
Also a few conclusions from the story :
As consumers we should never let our expectations drop .
Consumer courts are the weapons in hand of people and empower them to give fight to company of any size.
There is enormous power in writing and possibility of putting explosive writing on huge display canvas drives the message to those who really need it.
You can use Media power to your great advantage.
The companies are very vulnerable to ‘Loss of credibility ‘ and would always break their own rules to protect their good will..
So when you feel , you have been wronged with.. take the fight to the Hilt ..and I am sure you will win , the way He did
