Dell India Next Business Day Onsite Warranty - Beware
December 15, 2009
I have an XPS 1330 laptop from Dell India and I purchased Next Business Day Onsite warranty to make sure that my business did not suffer much if my laptop developed a glitch.
"Next Business Day" however turned out to be "Next Business Week" for me.
One day my laptop started acting strange. It would shutdown on its own or sometimes the screen would just go blank. It looked to me like a hardware issue rather than a virus infection or software installation issues.
I called Dell regarding this issue on a Monday. It was then that they informed me that they do not support Next Business Day (NBD) service at my location. Well they should have checked that before taking my money for Next Business Day service, right?
Well I agreed to a NBD + 1 service (that is service 2 days later). The Dell representative informed me that someone would call me on Wednesday before 9:30 AM and schedule an appointment for sometime before noon.
On Wednesday, no one called till 11:00 AM. I called Dell again and they then scheduled a service for the next day (NBD + 2, Thursday). On Thursday, a Dell service technician calls me up at 10 am and asks me if it is alright if he comes in the afternoon (even though he has been asked to do my service in the morning). He says that he has another service that he would like to do before coming to me. Well unprofessional-ism at its best.
I deny his request. He comes in at 11 am and tries to repair my laptop by relacing motherboard, heat sink, LCD screen and LCD screen cable. Now after his service, my laptop does not even boot.
Anyway, Dell schedules another service for the next Monday (NBD + 5). Another technician comes in at 11 am on Monday and solves the issue by replacing the motherboard again.
Well, the moral of the story is: Do not depend on Dell, especially their Next Business Day service.
Posted by liveit at 2:04 AM
Review of club suite experience at The Leela Kempinski, Kovalam
August 18, 2009
Leela Kempinski touts its Club Suite as the ultimate experience in luxury. However, the one we had did not fall into that category and left a lot to be desired.
When we checked in, the polite hostess informed us that we had been upgraded to a honeymoon package. She further informed us that a candle light dinner and 45 mins massage was included in the package. We thought, good, economic slow down has its bright side. Frankly, the upgrade was not a big deal for us as we did not think that we could make use of it. We were traveling with our 11 month old.
The duty manager seemed to recognize us from our previous visit and came to greet us. Seeing that we had an infant worth us, he proudly mentioned that the chef can make anything that is necessary for the kid (Club suites come with24 hour butler service).
Overall we had a great checkin experience. Everything great ended there.
When we called to make reservation for the massage, the spa people mention that they do not have us listed under the upgraded package. The front desk then calls us to inform that the upgrade was a error and that we are infact not upgraded. What a way to treat an upgrade (error)!
Later that day we thought we would give iddli (Kerala rice cake) to our daughter. We wanted some non spicy chamanthi (simple coconut dish) to go with it. Chamanthi is something that a chef can conjure up in 5 mins time.
The person taking the order mentioned that there were two regular (spicy) chamanthi available. When we asked if they can make us a non spicy chamanthi, he very hesitantly agreed.
When they brought us the food, the server very calmly pointed out that they have got us only the regular dish. When we mentioned the duty managers promise he asked us to wait for 5 mins and then got us the non spicy version.
There were a few other minor issues too. Overall our experience was probably at the level of a "garden view" room!
Posted by liveit at 9:41 AM
First Signs of Real Estate Bubble Bursting
January 30, 2008
I was surprised to find that the next day after I wrote a blog on how real estate prices in India were poised to collapse, The Economic Times carried an article mentioning the fact that the housing and land prices in India have already started to see a dip.
The Economic Times reported that in major cities, the prices have fallen by about 5% - 10%. In some cities like Kochi where the prices had sky rocketed in the past few years, the fall has been even sharper. The ET also reported that there is a sharp fall in the number of transactions. The property developers were also adopting a wait and watch stance to see if they need to shelf some of their more ambitious projects.
Todays Malayala Manorama - the leading daily in Kerala - also had an article as to how the not lowering of interest rates by RBI has dashed the hopes of real estate dealers and developers of a recovery. A recovery - meaning the prices have started to go down.
The other interesting tidbit that I came across is that the number of real estates "for sale" advertisements by brokers have gone done significantly.
All this points to an impending crash in real estate prices in India.
Posted by liveit at 1:05 AM
Real Estate Price Bubble in India
January 29, 2008
Deja Vu - that is what I feel when I see the current real estate prices in India. The prices for land and housing in India has been on a tear. The prices have shot through the roof (pun intended!) not only in the main cities but in the second and third tier cities as well. It looks like the days of the internet boom when NASDAQ was increasing in leaps and bounds. Finally the internet bubble burst and left behind a trail of destruction in terms of investment and speculation. The real estate prices in India seems to set for a similar course.
One need not look back as far as the internet boom to realize what is in store for real estate prices in India. The recent bursting of the housing boom in US is a more accurate reflection of the scene currently in India. The only difference is that the bursting of this bubble is not yet over. It might take another 2 more years before the housing prices in the US reach bottom.
The rise in land prices in India has been so drastic that there seems to be no logical reason behind it. Much of the rise in price is due to speculation. There are land brokers and real estate agents who pay an advance for a plot of land and then resell the land to a third party for a huge profit. This practise has been so rampant that it has created huge artificial demand.
This method of advancing a token amount and then flipping the land to a third party in effect creates highly leveraged conditions. High leverage, in layman's terms means the method to generate profits without putting the required capital. Using leverage is required for certain business activities, but when it is carried out on a scale that is not controlled, it leads to a highly unstable situation.
When the prices start to fall, these speculative interest will collapse as a house of cards. Panic will set in and people will just stop buying houses or property. This will create a huge surplus supply and the prices will bottom out.
In a normal cycle this increase and decrease in prices will usually be on a slower pace. However, when the increase has been so drastic, the fall in prices will be even more drastic. The fall in prices will also create a huge vacuum in demand as genuine customers of real estate and housing property will wait to see how far the prices will fall.
This is what is currently happening in the United States. The crash of the real estate prices in India is guaranteed. The only question is when. As many said after the internet boom & bust, what has gone up will have to come down - gravity still rules!
Posted by liveit at 2:16 AM
iPhone in India - on BSNL CellOne
December 19, 2007
On a recent trip to the US, I bought an iPhone and unlocked it. After coming back to India, I am now using it with my BSNL CellOne postpaid SIM. Here is a screen shot of the phone (notice CellOne on the top left as the carrier)
I love the phone. It is an engineering and design marvel. The interface is awesome and the third party applications (which you can install once you jailbreak the phone) are really good.
Currently I am using the GPRS 199 plan with BSNL. I am getting speeds of around 50Kbps. I am not still sure if I am using the GPRS or EDGE mode.
Some of the features I would like to see on the iPhone are:
1. Copy and Paste capability
2. GPS
3. Offline Wikipedia
Comments/Addition:
Q. GPRS settings for iphone 2G 3.0 jailbroken on BSNL east required can you help?
A.Try setting the APN to: gprseast.cellone.in The username and password should be your cell phone number. Hope this helps.
Reply: Voilla!!!
Got it going, restarted after the edit to the APN, it started working after about 30 mins. No user name/ pwd atall (its Blank) You may like to update this on your site no one is giving clear instructions, thanks to u I am good to go. Thanks a ton
Posted by liveit at 8:49 PM
Jaquar Mixing Unit - 7281 Wall Mixer 3-in-1 System (Queen's model)
May 23, 2006
Beware of buying Jaquar products. I have been having quite a lot of problems with the taps I bought from Jaguar. Since the plumbers were not able to fix the problems I have requested assistance from the company through email. As of now it looks like a design or manufacturing issue. Let us see how well they support their customers. I'll keep this blog updated regarding the progress. Till then, anyone out there thinking of buying Jaquar, hold off for a while!
Copy of the letter to Jaquar.
Hello,
I recently bought a Jaquar 7281 Wall Mixer 3-in-1 System for installation with a bath tub. The problem I have now is that the pressure of water coming through the tap is very low.
I am located at Trivandrum, Kerala. I bought the item from Amset Steel Corporation, Trivandrum. Is it possible to send someone from the company (Jaquar) to take a look at the problem? My contact number is 94477xxxx.
The plumbers have tried all they can. The water pressure till the entry of mixing unit is very good. Is this a design or manufacturing issue of the mixing unit? The price I paid for this unit was about Rs 5200. This mixing unit was bought along with a whole set of the same range (Queen's) for a total of about Rs. 26,800. After paying so much for the taps, the least I expect is to have good water pressure.
Please do look into this issue and follow up.
Thanks,
Joseph Chacko
Posted by liveit at 3:33 AM
Makemytrip - review from a friend
April 6, 2006
Note: This is a review I received from a friend and is not based on my experience.
Hi,
This is to make people aware of the cheating which is going on behind the www.makemytrip.com
These people are simply making assumptions and booking the flights with their choice instead of what they are told to book by us.
I want to share an incident with you all so that you can save yourself from these cheaters and discard their practices in future.
I searched for a flight on their site for Bangalore to New Delhi for 29th April, 2006, and I could find the following flight, which suited me well. And as we can see it says 3699 Rs INR (excluding tax).
Departing Flight Rs.3699
Air Sahara 122
Boeing 737-800
Duration
2.40 hrs
Depart
Bangalore (BLR)Sat 29 Apr
7:30:AM
Arrive
Delhi (DEL)Sat 29 Apr
10:10:AM
I booked the same via credit card and then I got a mail from these people for the confirmed booking,
This is as following:
Dear ,
Thank you for booking your travel with MakeMyTrip.com - we value your business. Kindly
take a moment to review your itinerary and booking details given below:
1. Name/Above 12-AVML
S2-122BangaloreNew Delhi29 Apr, 7:30:AM29 Apr, 10:10:AM
28 Mar, 2006 INR 4944
29 Apr, 2006 INR 4944
MMT-D60570 INR 0
Credit Card
As you can see, the above details say that the flight is booked for 4944 Rs.
It did not ask me before booking and directly booked the tickets. Then I called at the toll free number mentioned on their site and asked why it booked for the 4944 Rs though I clicked for the ticket of Rs 3699+tax .They said it our policy and at the time of booking the Economy class ticket was not available so WE had to book your ticket for the M (the next upper class).They without asking anything (no pop-up message or warning), upgraded to the upper class.
Then I called them again and asked to cancel the same ticket and they told that they will charge 750 Rs (500 for Sahara and 250 for their site) for this, I told them that it’s the fault of your site and that’s the reason I want to cancel this one and at least I am not eligible for paying this 250 Rs. The person told that you agreed to our terms and conditions and said ok ,so now I cant help you on this and Sorry you will have to do like this only.
So from now onward please be alert from get cheated by these people and we should discourage these people from cheating us so honestly.
Written in good spirit,
I request you all to forward this mail to you friends and make them aware of these things
Posted by liveit at 5:28 AM
Booking tickets for trains on Indian railways online
April 1, 2006
Now it's possible to book online, tickets for trains in India.
The website you need to go to is:
In order to find out the train numbers, timing, etc I use the following page:
http://www.indianrail.gov.in/cgi_bin/inet_srcdest_cgi.cgi
There are a few types of tickets that you can book online.
The one I prefer is "e-ticket". With this category, you can print the tickets at home.
There is also the "i-ticket" - This type of ticket you have to book online and is delivered to you in 2-3 days.
There is a service fee associated with train ticket bookings, but it's well worth the hassle. For the "e-ticket" it is Rs. 40/-
You can pay for these tickets with credit cards or debit cards. I use the option for HDFC debit card which takes me to the HDFC online website. The procedure is quite straight forward.
It was a pleasant surprise to find that booking train tickets on the internet is quite convenient. The convenience almost equals the standards of "Expedia" for those of you familiar with this service in US or other places.
Posted by liveit at 4:40 AM
Banking transfer - follow up on RBI SEFT discountiuation
February 2, 2006
Well, as a follow up to the previous post here's some information that I came across on the RBI SEFT discountiuation:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to discontinue the special electronic funds transfer system (SEFT) from January 1, 2006, and has put in place a plan for all banks to shift to the national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) system. Initially, the NEFT will start with eight major banks and progressively increase to cover all the banks participating in the SEFT clearing. Meanwhile, the RBI has proposed to migrate all the present SEFT banks to NEFT by December 15, 2005. NEFT is structured based on financial messaging solution (SFMS) platform and is public key infrastructure (PKI) enabled. The RBI has advised banks to be ready with SFMS so as to join NEFT at an early date.
Posted by liveit at 8:34 PM
Banking Transfers in India - Retracing steps to stone age?
It looks like banking in India is taking a few steps backwards - hope this is not a sign of going back to the age of long queues in SBI banks!
Well, here's what has happened. I have a Citibank NRE account and till last month, I was able to transfer funds online from this CitiNRI account to almost any other bank that I wished to, where I had an account.
This month when I tried to transfer some money from my Citibank NRE account to another bank, there's this message:
"Effective 02Feb2006, as per the new online funds transfer facility offered by Citibank, you will be able to transfer funds only to 15 payee cities. The older process called SEFT is no longer supported by RBI for all banks in India. "
Well, why has RBI done such a stupid, user unfriendly rollback? I don't have any answer. In this era of online convenience, RBI has taken a step backward.
I only hope that this is a step towards implementation of something that is even better - but in that case they could atleast have waited till the new stuff was in place.
Posted by liveit at 8:23 PM
Citibank - Transfer of funds to India - Beware!
January 19, 2006
If you are planning to transfer a considerable amount of money (> $50,000) to India, please read below.
Citibank will ask for a lot of personal details including the following: Where you work, how long you have been working there, where you used to work before, how long you have been in US, the source of the funds you are transferring, the purpose of the funds, the place where you will be using these funds.
I find asking for this level of detail as invasion of my privacy. Citibank mentions that they need this information to supply to RBI (Reserve Bank of India). This is apparently needed for any sum above $50K.
If you are trying to transfer the money through check, you will not be able to cancel the transfer once you find it annoying that they are asking all these details. This is because Citibank has already converted the dollars into rupees. You will have to go through a tedious process of submitting a written application and stuff like that...
So in case you want to transfer a big sum of money to india, try to keep it below $50K. I am not sure what happens if you do 2 transfers each less than $50K, but collectively above $50K.
Comments:
firstname: GB019
lastname:
email: j............@yahoo.com
Citi NRI is the worst website ever built. For one the login is kinda goofy. You have a complex 16 digit login ID that you can mask with a user id. However your user id is mapped to your login id on each computer (Basically I can have as many user ids as I have computers.) You delete cookies and you are back to the drawing board. The password you gotta type in using your mouse using some goofy onscreen keyboard. Then you go to a cluttered screen with over 200 links. God help you if you want to find anything there. If you want support you have to send an email from the support link, however if you send an email from your mailbox you will never get a response. After a week or so somebody responds without reading your question. Keep in mind the response never appears in your mailbox (Your mailbox always shows empty). Once you go to the support link and see the inadequate message, you are required to respond to that message (They call is a query. I guess they think their employees are like databases you execute queries against). However make sure you don't click on any link before you respond; because once a message is read, it is automatically removed from the support link taking away any ability to respond
ACH transfers take from 3 weeks to 6 months (They take money out of your source bank account on the same or next day but take from weeks to sometimes 6 months to credit any information into your account).
The other scheme they have going on is they turn your account into an inactive / dormant status for inactivity (meaning moving money in or out of the account) thereby locking you out of your account and trapping any cash you have in your account. If you want your account to be operational, they ask you to physically go to a branch in California or to one of their offshore offices in India. If you don't you will not have access to your cash. By law they are required to notify you prior preventing you from giving you access to your account. They get around this by changing your account to an inactive status first which prevents you from transacting on your account (even though you can log in normally and look at your balance and stuff giving you an illusion of normalcy). After a further status of inactivity they change it to "Dormant" totally preventing you from having any access to your account.
Going to their exchange rate, they consistently give you 1-2Rs (2-4%) lower than market conversion rates. They make most or all of their profits from skimming off the top when compared to SBI and ICICI rates.
Finally in terms of support it is impossible to find a telephone number to their support desk. If you ever need to call CITI NRI Helpdesk their number is 800 248 4674
Overall CITI is a very unethical bank. The most unethical I've seen so far especially in their international dealings (US Regulators and guarantees have forced them to maintain a certain level of honesty and transparency in the US). Their website is the least user friendly of all websites and CITI NRI is the worst by far of any banking site. It's a mess
Thanks so much for posting the 800 number (1-800-248-4674 then 2 then 9) . I was able to call them. Their support staff as always was hopelessly helpless. My account was apparrently dormant when I initiated a transfer. They took the money out of my American Bank account but want me to physically go to a branch in India if I want to access the money. It is crazy.
Posted by liveit at 9:39 PM
IDBI Bank Net Banking login - frustrating - my letter to the branch head
Note: Names changed to protect privacy
Hello JJJ,
I am writing this email to bring to your notice the fact that I have been having a difficult time trying to get Net Banking operational for my IDBI bank account.
It has been more than 45 days since I opened my account with IDBI bank. When I opened the account, I had asked the representative if I would be able to access my account online. He had informed me that I would be able to do so as soon as the account is active - within 5 days.
It took about 2 weeks for my account to be active. After that when I tried to access the account, I got a message saying "the internet login is disabled for security reasons, please contact your relationship manager". As I was not informed about who my relationship manager was, I contacted the person who had opened my account - RRR.
He informed me that I had to fill in a form to enable the net banking feature - note that none of this was mentioned at the time of opening the account. I could have finished the formalities at time of opening the account.
Anyway, I filled up the form and gave it to Mr. RRR. A week passed and I was still not able to log in. I called up Mr. RRR again and enquired about the matter. He told me that it will take 2 days to enable the net banking feature. It has been 3 days since that and I am still not able to login.
Please look into the matter and do the necessary at the earliest.
Thanks,
JJJ
Posted by liveit at 9:07 PM
HDFC Bank Fund Transfer is a joke
January 10, 2006
If you are thinking of transferring funds online between your HDFC bank account and another bank account, be warned - it's just not possible from HDFC Net banking.
Why the heck do they then provide such fancy name as "Fund Transfer" option for their net banking?! This so called Fund Transfer can only transfer funds between two HDFC accounts. That is pretty much useless for me.
When I opened the account with HDFC bank, the representative from HDFC bank - there were three of them - assured me without a blink of their eye that it is possible to transfer funds from other bank accounts to HDFC bank account once the Net banking is enabled. Well seems like those were hollow promises from HDFC bank representatives. (I noticed on their website that they were "Best in Customer Responsiveness" - this might be their modus operandi!)
When I called up HDFC bank in order to enquire about this fund transfer, they informed me that transferring funds from other bank accounts is not possible due to "security risks". As if other banks are somewhat ignorant about these risks!
Posted by liveit at 11:43 PM
IDBI Bank - How To Access Internet banking online
January 2, 2006
As mentioned in a previous entry, its quite easy to open an IDBI Bank account. They even give you the ATM card, and Internet PIN (IPIN) number the minute you open it.
However, its not quite easy to start accessing your account online. Though you have the interent password (or IPIN), you need to wait till the account is active - in my case it took more than 2 weeks. This is after assuarances from the banking executives that the account will be active in 4 days time.
But wait, even if your account becomes active, you cannot yet do internet banking. Why? Well, when I tried to login, I got an error : "Your i-netbanking login is disabled for security reasons. Please contact your relationship manager."
So I call the number of the branch - I did not know who my relationship manager was - and then they inform me that I have to go to the bank and sign a form to start using the internet banking service.
If you have read one of my previous blogs on HDFC bank, you will notice that this procedure seems to be familiar. Anyway, I called up the person who opened my account and he says that he'll come and collect the form from my home - well atleast that part is good - I do not have to leave the house.
If you are in a similar situation, you can find this form here:
http://www.idbibank.com/common/pdf/Channelregistrn.pdf
Posted by liveit at 2:11 AM
