Well, same was the case with me. If you are planning to use your out of state vehicle for more than a month in AP, then its necessary to pay road tax. The procedure to pay road tax is pretty simple, don’t be put off by horror stories.

I stay in the Gachibowli-hitech city area. Now I have been to three RTA offices, RTA Attapur, RTA, Kondapur and RTA, Khairatabad also. I found the Khairatabad office to be the most hopeless and useless. There is such a huge crowd there and the officials were very busy that they barely have time to answer any questions/queries.

So here is what I did step by step, if you have a NoC and need to get your number transferred then there would be an extra step after paying Road Tax. Before getting the NoC, do find out the RTA name. A NoC in Hyderabad RTA name doesn’t work in Rangareddy District except by going to Khairatabd RTA , a step which you don’t want to take.

1. Head over to Kondapur RTO in your vehicle, as soon as you enter, look around for someone in khaki uniform and tell him you need to pay road tax.

2. He will take you to a room which has space for 2 officers, the officers in my case were very polite. They created a check report for my vehicle and impounded my DL.

3. This check report is what you need alongwith your vehicle RC copy and invoice, head on over to the Attapur RTO

4. Ask the relevant form for road tax payment from one of the shops below, the RTA does not have any form in stock (maybe it’s a way to scam).

5. Fill up most details in the form, rest details would be filled in my the clerk who would calculate the tax needed to be paid. Ensure the vehicle value he takes is correct and does not include road tax already paid in home state.

6. Get the road tax value cross verified from the administrative officers who will double check using the original invoice.

7. Once 7 is done, you would need to get a draft made for the road tax amount and there is another small fee (230 I think) which you can also pay by cash.

8. Once you get your draft goto the same counter, the person there would issue you the coveted green receipt, take a few copies ,keep the original safe and drive around with a copy for the RTA folks on the road.

Since I paid the road tax, I have been stopped twice , the penalty is much more if you bring your car in and pay road tax much later.

I was dining out with a friend when I commented to him that the waiter seemed to be over-doing the whole ‘I am your server, tell me how is your food act’. It was getting annoying to me and I commented to my friend that he doesn’t need to do it. He reminded me of an incident which would make me skip a particular Subway India restaurant and I understood why some places always make it a point that you feel pleasant after going there.

It was new-year’s eve, we were planning on cooking a good dinner for the night and hang out with friends to ring in the new year. So I had skipped breakfast and hoped to catch a quick bite at the Subway in Jayabheri (Near Kothaguda Area). As usual, I got the robotic greeting from the person there. Waited a few mins for my turn, since it was a Saturday morning they were probably short of staff.

I ordered my favourite breakfast sub (which is bread + meat + eggs) and asked the guy there to add veggies (which are an extra 30 bucks or so, INR). anyway so this guy agrees but later on he says his cashier tells him not to allow it and he flatly refuses to add the veggies or for that matter anything to my sub. Now take notices of the fact that this is my favourite sub and I eat it all the time from this outlet as well as from other outlets. I ask for the manager, he points me to the shabby looking cashier , I say manager or owner, he gives me a number which is always switched off. I give up and ask him to finish whatever he had started making.

Now while all this is happening, I casually tell my friend that I will never visit this outlet again. It happens just like that, 1 bad experience ticks off something in your head and you involuntarily decide never to visit a place again. I decided to rely on the other subway outlet near my home that has no problems accepting my requests and whose workers actually listen to me. The owner of that store also responded well to me when I had complained about a certain issue.

That’s the different that good customer service can make to your business, just keep it in mind and instruct your employees to do the needful

I am going to send across this link to the Subway India folks and see if they can take a hint.

So I recently got a car, and like the deal hunting monster I am I started to look at the best credit card for saving money spent on Petrol, The Standard Chartered Super Value Titanium seemed like an awesome card, but alas they didn’t issue me the card, since I also own the Manhattan credit card from them. That’s another story, Standard Chartered bank has awesome product offerings but a pathetic customer care and customer relations team. Will post on that later. My credit limit is around 1/4 of my take home salary and they refuse to increase it.

So yeah, I came across the Citibank Indian Oil Titanium credit card which promises around 2.5% additional cash back apart from fuel surcharge waiver. I investigated into the card a little bit, my city  (Hyderabad) has a number of Indian Oil petrol pumps. So one lazy Sunday morning I went across from 1 petrol pump to another, all in the hopes of finding an Indian Oil petrol pump that has a Citibank Machine. Alas, checking at 4-5 different petrol pumps in a 6km radius, I could find none ?

So I went to the company Indian Oil petrol pump at Madhapur, surely they must have Citibank machine for swiping the card. But even they didn’t have a Citibank machine, they had 3-4 machines on the table, just no Citibank. Why would a company owned and company operated petrol pump not keep a Citibank machine when they are such big partners ? All seems a bit fishy to me. Is it that its just a trick, get people to take the cards but then limit the places where it can be used for maximum benefit ?

My conclusion is that the Indian Oil Citibank co-branded card is kind of a marketing gimmick unless you live near the minority of petrol pumps that are owned by Indian Oil and use a Citibank machine. Unless that is the case, you are better off dumping this overhyped marketing mumbo jumbo driven credit card.

I discovered a list on their website and as expected, only a few pumps seem to carry the Citibank machine and going that far(for me) would use more petrol than the cash back Citibank would give.

1. We departed 15 minutes before scheduled departure time.

2. We landed about 25 minutes before scheduled arrival time.

Check-in : Smooth, barely took 5 minutes, staff was courteous and offered me good seats when I indicated that I was a frequent flier. There was also another person with a portable checking machine, but he skipped me for some reason

Onboard Service :  Very professional, a little too professional ? A little more warmth will go a long way in making passengers feel more comfortable. Also onboard food is too expensive and not really worth the money.

Fares : Somehow Spicejet always manages to get a 1 to 10 rupee upper hand on Indigo prices. Otherwise Indigo is the most economical option on most sectors

So how does it compare to other low cost airlines, in a nutshell :

Indigo vs Kingfisher Airlines : Kingfisher is overhyped, expensive with a very bad CRM, you can see my previous post for more. Their customer care doesn’t even reply to complaints. On the other hand, when I had complained about Indigo’s seating policy last time I flew with them, I got multiple replies. This time the problem seems to have been rectified. I will confirm after my return flight only though

Indigo vs Spicejet : Not much to separate here except the exceptional on time performance of Indigo Airlines vs Spicejet. Last time I took a Spicejet flight at around the same time as this one, it was delayed by over 2 hours.

A rare honour, for this particular experience, I was so delighted to spend more time with my family, I give Indigo a Rating: 5 out of 5 stars , however I will reserve more comments for my return flight.

Update : Got a reply from them that they were investigating the issue and would reply soon, been 13 days since then. Not holding my breath if you know what I mean, big thumbs down to Kingfisher Airlines and its customer care.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Thank you for your correspondence to us. We sincerely apologize for the delay in our response to you.

We acknowledge your concern regarding the recent experience of your mother with Kingfisher Airlines. We would like to share with you that, on receipt of your email an investigation was initiated on the issue; the time taken for the investigation has regrettably delayed our response. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

We request you to please allow us some more time and we will revert to you soon.

Best Regards,

<name hidden>

Guest Commitment
Kingfisher Airlines 

My mom had to go to Shimla on an emergency and since Kingfisher was the only Airline operating the flight, we booked their service for a price that would be around 5-6 times the cost of a road ticket , ofcourse that is not the point. The ticket was booked through Ezeego1

As you maybe aware Kingfisher operates all its flights through Terminal 3 at Delhi which is outside the city. That day due to bad weather Kingfisher decided to cancel the flight after keeping the people in dark and delaying the flight for a few hours before cancelling it (to their credit they served a subway sandwich in the wait period). They gave the guest choice to take a refund or re-book for another day or they could arrange road transport. Ofcourse my mom didn’t want 5000 rupees worth of road transport to Shimla, so she opted for the refund.

When my 55 year old mother asked for transport back to the city, she was in for a rude shock. The lady at the counter asked for some time after consulting (with god knows who), she told my mother that since we had booked via a travel agent, she wont be providing her with transport back to the city. What an outrageous excuse ? It would be better if they say they don’t give transport, but to deny that over such a frivolous reason was totally unacceptable, how does it matter when they are cancelling the flight, its not like they will be paying commission to the travel agent for the cancelled flight. Anyway, my mom being a non-violent person did not raise a hue and cry. I am sure had she done that , she would have got a cab for the city instantly.

As a result, my 60 year old dad had to make the long trip to terminal 3 and get my mom. Its still fine at this stage except for te stupid reason given by the lady at the counter. What irked me more was that when I complained about the incident via the Kingfisher website where Vijay Mallya assures you he is taking things personally, I didn’t even get a callback from these guys let alone an apology. So truly un-premium service, served with arrogance.

In contrast, Indigo, Spicejet and Jet Airways all made a point to personally apologise and thank me for any bouquets and brickbats I sent their way.

The purpose of this post is just to let people know that Fly Kingfisher may boast of premium service, but our experience was truly third class with them. Will send across this post to them in an email.

Not only do they cheat you off your money, they do it in style. Most of the times they return your money but sometimes the  ingenious people at the nodal officer’s office come up with such stupid explanations, you feel like banging your head on the wall. Same thing happened to me.

I am on the Rs.98 per month GPRS 2G plan. All of a sudden I get a SMS that Rs.60 are now deducted from my account for 2G charges. This is ofcourse some other plan that would overlap with my Rs.98 plan. I write off a letter to the nodal officer directly since this has been happening to me for very long. Instead of helping me with the problem, the people there came up with an ingenious explanation (reproduced later for your viewing pleasure).

Basically they say I accessed internet using Airtel Live. Which is a baseless lie, I never opened Airtel Live. My phone just has APN settings which I havent modified in ages. Anyway I have decided to appeal to the apellate authority since this doesn’t make any sense. Hopefully the people at the appellate authority will have better sense than those at the nodal officer.

Thank you for writing to airtel.
This has reference to your e-mail regarding balance depletion towards GPRS for your airtel Prepaid number xxxxxxxxxxx.

There is a charge of Rs. 60/- for browsing Internet service through Airtel Live. Hence, we regret to inform you that charges are valid and waiver for the same could not be processed.
In order to avoid balance depletion, we request you to save the Mobile Office settings as default settings and delete the Airtel Live settings.

Should you require any further online assistance, you may contact our 24×7 helpline at 12118 (Chargeable at 50 paisa for 3 minutes) from any alternate airtel number. While calling from other service providers, please dial 8790912118 (Chargeable as per the respective network charges).

We hope that we have been able to assist you suitably.
Please feel free to speak to our call center executive on 121 regarding any query/ request and 198 (Toll Free) for any complaints. You can also email us at 121@in.airtel.com.
You can get in touch with the Nodal Officer with your earlier request or complaint number if it’s still unresolved. You may send an email at nodalofficer.andhra@airtel.in or you may call at 9959334865 from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM Monday to Friday. The Nodal officer will provide a resolution to your complaint in 10 days.

If you do not receive a satisfactory response from Nodal officer you may send an email at appellate.andhra@airtel.in or you may call at 9959444865 from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM Monday to Friday.

Assuring you the best of our services.
Warm Regards,
Asha J
Nodal Office
Bharti Airtel Limited

Ordering and Installation : I ordered via the Tata Sky helpline, I paid with my credit card over IVRS, the set top box cost me Rs.3999, 500 rupees less than it would have cost me if I were a new customer. Tata Sky is a move which I consider unfair trade practice has restricted name transfers on Set Top Boxes. That would ensure that people return their set top box to Tata Sky for Rs.300. The engineer who came to install told me that the returned boxes are then used as replacements when someone’s STB goes kaput.

Anyway, 12 hours later I got a call from a Tata Sky engineer wanting to fix an appointment with me. He arrived 30 minutes late for the appointment with a set top box and a dish. He replaced the previous dish because the new STB would need a bigger one. Also since this had a DVR, they would need an additional wire from the Tata Sky dish to our STB.

The carton in all its glory, contains a Set Top Box, Smart Card, HDMI cable, el cheapo batteries, remote and a manual.

Made in Thailand, el cheapo , also notice inflated MRP of 4999.

A view of the backside wiring of Tata Sky Plus HD. This has a FAN

Notice the Ethernet ports and the USB ports, they are marked for future use in the manual. If its future use or TATA Sky couldn’t figure out a use , its anybody’s guess !

After the wiring was done, the installation guys switched on the STB and let the box download the new software, a few calls to the Tata Sky helpline and we were all set, receiving HD channels. For HD channels, Tata Sky charges Rs.50 a month extra on top of your normal package. Its definitely steep, especially for only 6-7 HD channels. Star has the most HD offerings and Star World , Star Movies and Star Plus HD do not have advertisements yet.

Picture quality was as expected much crisper for the HD channels and even non-HD channels improved a lot. I am using a Sony Bravia 40 inch LCD with this box and the difference in non-HD channels was very noticeable.

Above is a snap of the HDMI cable given along with the Tata Sky Plus HD Set Top Box, nothing much to write home about, looking to get a replacement from the United States in hopes of even better signal quality. Anyone knows if gold plated ones are worth it ?

A small overview of the Tata Sky Plus HD remote :

Hope you enjoyed this basic overview of the Tata Sky HD Plus Installation and Ordering process. For more information about features and information about usage and hacks, log onto this IndianTechBlog article.

A special mention for the Tata Sky installation team here, they were thoroughly professional and did their job very very well.

It can happen only in India and that too in this state. Readers from Andhra Pradesh have been reporting that bookmyshow and other cinema websites have stopped booking online tickets for movie shows. Bookmyshow has this banner up on their website all week :

Due to statutory reasons (Govt. of AP) all online ticketing in Andhra Pradesh is taken off the web till further notice.

There are reports on the blogosphere that all this is a part of Andhra Pradesh government’s monopolizing the online ticketing plans wherein they want to force cinemas to sell only through 1 online ticketing partner. The move at face value only seems grossly unfair and illegal.

This is ofcourse a huge inconvenience to the large IT and ex-pat crowd that is present in Hyderabad. The matter seems to be sub-judice in the high court with a stay granted in Bookmyshow’s favour , however reports suggest that the Andhra Govt. officials are still harassing Bookmyshow and its management team and that’s what prompted them to take the online ticket booking offline.

There doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel with the Govt. seeming obstinate to ensure that only their choice of ticket operator is able to sell online tickets in Andhra Pradesh.

If you follow our blog regularly you would know that we very often bring up the ground realities up to senior management of companies so that they can attend to matters.

This is where the trouble starts :

I couldn’t find any email address for reliance retail nor a feedback form. That is probably THE most shocking thing for a company in the service sector having retail outlets. I couldn’t find a way to contact a senior person in Reliance retail to look at my complaint. As I investigated further I could literally see thousands of complaints people have posted  against Reliance Fresh and other Reliance Retail outlets at generic consumer complaints websites. These vary from overcharging, hoarding, loss of articles kept with security guard to even more serious ones like misbehavior, selling of bad quality (rotten) food items etc.  Even they were victims of the fact that Reliance Retail doesn’t seem to have an easily accessible CRM. A number of people did try and complain via the store root but hit dead ends.

It doesn’t give me particular pleasure to make this post, I am also a shareholder in RIL, albeit only holding a few shares. Just hoping that this post catches the attention of some higher up in Reliance Retail and they come up with a customer relationship solution that’s much better. At this point anything would be better than the no customer care we have.

Do you have a good or bad experience at Reliance Retail (especially Reliance Fresh)  stores to narrate in comments ?

Since then its been a long wait to get KYC certified. Its been around 3.5 months since I had applied for KYC but presently I have been able to hit the status ‘Present in verification’ only. Before this my status was stuck at ‘Present in Process’ for a very very long time. Approximately 2.5 months went by and the status remained ‘Present in Process’.

In the meantime my orders on Mutual Fund sites are being rejected as KYC is failed and its caused some loss to me as I wasn’t able to purchase units while the market was so down. The Indian Govt. is famous for such half baked ideas without any focus on actual implementations for the same.

The disclaimer on the site reads :

This KYC status shall be used exclusively for investment in mutual funds which have appointed CDSL Ventures Limited for centralized KNOW-YOUR-CUSTOMER (KYC) process, & shall not be used or relied upon for any other purposes, including commercial transactions, or more particularly for authenticating the identity of the investor .CVL shall not be liable to any person using this information for any purpose, other than investments in mutual funds.

But the reality is that all Mutual Funds are using this data to check your KYC eligibility and you are doomed if this doesn’t reflect correctly. To check your KYC verified status for investing in mutual funds, access :

http://www.cvlindia.com/inquiry_kyc01.asp