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.

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.

I have grown up using the Nokia E63 and E71 so when dad lost his E71 (got stolen, no FIR from Delhi Police, deja-vu ? ) , E72 was the natural upgrade for his needs. So he backed off to the Nokia N72 while we searched for a good deal on the Nokia E72. Finally we got the E72 for around $220 from the United States, the phone came with the car navigation attachments which consists of a stand.

Anyway, the background ends here. Moving onto the phone itself. As soon as you hold the phone in your hand, you see it’s a sleeker version of the Nokia E63 and possibly even of the Nokia E71, although it’s a gram heavier than the E71 with the new features built in , it would be injustice to call it a bulkier version of E71.

The phone unlike its earlier version E71 has 2 cameras (one of them 5 MP)  and a much larger internal memory at 250 MB. The dual cameras promise good video calling capabilities and the much needed internal memory upgrade means more good things inside the phone for you. The phone came with a 2GB microSD card.

Physical Upgrades :

Compared to the Nokia E71, the Nokia E72 while having the same shape does have an individual character about it. The keys are changed, the camera is changed and even the unlock key combination is changed. All these changes add to a non-seamless transition from the Nokia E71. My first impression of the E72 was that it unlocks differently than the E71. That itself takes some getting used to. The email key is also precariously placed underneath the right soft-key. I accidentally keep pressing the email key every now and then. On usability these things push the E72 a notch lower than the E71.

But there is a silver lining. Nokia has addressed a long standing demand from the E71 which even the E63 had. The E63 had a flashlight button, the E71 lacked it but with the E72 Nokia has addressed the particular point.

The Nokia E72 has a trackpad instead of a 5 way navigational key. The trackpad is so small that its actually very annoying and prone to mis-clicks and mis-navigation.  The older nav key was definitely better than the new track pad which just gives the phone some novelty but nothing on the usability. Even browsing photos using the trackpad key is difficult as multiple images get swiped many times.

The Nokia E72 also has a standard micro USB port, to tell you the truth I don’t remember what was on the Nokia E71 as I always used it with bluetooth. 

The E72 also has a 3.5mm audio jack as compared to a non standard 2.5mm jack on the Nokia E71. What it essentially means is that you can use your normal headphones with the Nokia E72. The built in earphones aren’t really that great with respect to quality but do the job.

The E72 also has volume keys which allow you to zoom into and out of images. It took me a bing/google search to figure out on how to zoom in and out of images on the Nokia E72.

Apart from this the E72 comes with an accelerometer (I didn’t see where they use it till now). The phone interface doesn’t seem to have been customized for the accelerometer which is a dampener.

The E72 also has GPS which I am surprised to say is extremely accurate and beats the GPS on my windows phone in terms of accuracy (atleast here in Delhi).

The E72 is also supposed to have a proximity sensor and a magnetometer. Will update as soon as I see how to use those. Overall from a physical perspective, the device is a definite upgrade from its poorer cousin but there are still chinks which Nokia need to address.

Stay tuned for the second part of this review, internals.

I am dividing this post into 2 parts :

1. Advertisements via phone calls – Airtel has this number 9849805941 which was calling (is still calling) me once a day and plays ads. Since I had registered for DND I contacted Airtel to stop spamming me with ads. Soon Airtel came up with an explanation that this was not a telemarketer number and hence I should complain to the Police if I want these ads to stop, can you imagine that ? They had the audacity to say they want to protect the privacy of this number who makes 1 call to me (and other numbers ? ) every day with ads.

I have also escalated this matter to the nodal officer who is also yet to get back to me, even more suspicious is the fact that I cannot call this number and the line says the number doesn’t exist but still I get one ad from this number everyday.

2. Service messages and Automatic Service subscription – TRAI says that all VAS services need an explicit customer approval to get activated, of course the agents sitting there who want to make Airtel some fast and unethical buck don’t seem to think so. This had happened to me twice in Delhi and twice now in Hyderabad and the modus operandi is even more brazen. After my complaint I got a call from a call center agent who said “these services are activated from back end” , wow, ofcourse he didn’t give that in writing but call record will show he said that. He also claimed his supervisor was not there when I asked to speak to him. When I asked him to tell his supervisor to call me back the supervisor magically re-appeared. Wonder if these call center people are Airtel employees or vendors.

The customer care responses to my mails on the matter are below  (extraneous stuff removed) :

Mail No. 1

With reference to your E-mail dated 08/10/2010, you have expressed concern regarding balance deduction for your Airtel mobile number <snip>.

We realize that this situation must have inconvenienced you.
We would like to inform you that Cricket Alert Service is active and there is a charge of Rs.5/-. Hence, the balance was deducted.
Deactivation of Cricket Alert Service service: 
The Cricket Alert Service has been deactivated with effect from 08/10/2010, as per your request. Confirmation message will be sent on successful deactivation.
Adjustment:
We would like to inform you that the amount of Rs. 5/- has been processed and will be credited on your account within 24 hours.

Mail No. 2 (the same service had again been activated by another agent) – During this period I was on vacation and my phone was switched off so I didn’t realize the balance deduction till I wrote them a mail :

> Thank you for writing to Airtel.
>
> With reference to your e-mail dated 17/11/2010, you have expressed concern
> regarding promotional call and message , deactivate the Value Added service
> for your Airtel mobile number <snip>.
>
> We realize that this situation must have inconvenienced you. However, we
> assure you a prompt action to solve the concern.
>
> We would like to inform you that as per our records there is a charge of Rs.
> 1.50/- deducted for the activation of Cricket Service.
>  
> We would like to inform you that the Cricket Service  has  already been
> deactivated on 03/11/2010.

I am still waiting for my Rs.1.50 refund and stoppage of these advertising calls. I am sick and tired of Airtel’s brazenness now and seriously want to switch over all my connections as soon as number portability comes over. This is also the most serious I have ever been about consumer court, totally aghast at the service dished out by Airtel to me (4-5 year old customer)

However a lot is left to be desired in terms of store experience and feedback handling by the store. I have felt disappointed with the services rendered in the stores multiple times, each time taking the pain to contact Shopper’s Stop via their online portal but never even in my life did I receive a response from their first level customer service. I will explain why I think the shopping experience there needs to improve.

1. Arrogant sales staff – This happened to me last week, me and dad were shopping at one of the Shopper’s Stop in the NCR area and this guy just kept on hovering over us like a bee over a flower, my dad asked him to excuse him but he was relentless staying there with a sheepish grin on his face, it was only after I sternly told him that I will call him if I need him did he move away.

But this is nothing, recap 3 months in the past, same store. I had recently got a new job (well paying ), so I was looking around in the store for a gift for my parents and the perfume counter caught my eye, I starting checking out the testers for my dad and voila out comes another sales associate with an aim to disturb us. “What can I help you with ?” he quipped with a malicious looking grin on his face. As if I am so dumb that I cant use a perfume bottle.

I felt like Irfan Khan from Mumbai Meri Jaan, like this guy was just there to ensure that I didn’t use the testers of the perfumes. I promptly excused myself and went away from there. I can imagine the associate feeling proud he saved 2 sprays of the tester without realizing his encroachment cost him a sale. In contrast the folks at Pantaloons don’t bother you while you check out the testers. Maybe the staff here is trained like this.

I wrote to shopper’s stop about this incident via their online portal, till date no one has reverted back to me.

Recap a few months before this also, I needed to get my jeans altered, since it was getting late I requested them to send the altered jeans to my home (offered as part of Gold membership to First Citizen). Guess what, “Sir, I will have to talk to my senior about that,” some fake conversations later: “Please collect it after 1 hour from here only.”

2. System not working, salesman disappears with card – I am in another city and mom and dad are out shopping at Shopper’s Stop and they pick out some stuff to purchase. At the billing counter they are told that the first citizen system is not working and neither is their credit card machine. In an instant the sales person disappears with my parents’ credit card to try on another machine. My parents frantically try to locate him, for all we know he could be skimming our card. He reappears five minutes later with the card saying its still not working. My parents dump their purchase there and walk out. I had asked my parents for the executive’s name, and I complained via their online portal. You guessed it right, no response !

3. Customer Care needed, but no response – This one is about when I needed customer care with one of the items I had purchased from their store. I wished to know the procedure for repair etc. Again I wrote via their website and email addresses and got no response. It was only when I got in touch with a senior employee personally that I got a response. It was smoother sailing after that though.

So what is the purpose of this post ?

Its not to defame this store (I infact still visit it once a month), but to bring to the attention of some of the senior folks on what they are doing wrong. Theirs is a publicly listed company and if they don’t even read/respond to customer care emails, it’s a worrying factor. Lets hope we see some change after someone from Shopper’s Stop reads this post.