Potential Sexual Harassment Incident at Equitas Bank

I received a call purportedly from Equitas Bank Relationship Manager on 30th August 2023 at 12.30 PM. Earlier incidents were intentionally revealing investment solicitations and hence had to be escalated and reported as Unsolicited Commercial Communication. However this time the caller was very professional and was only started asking gently about the following topics.

1. Ease of Use
2. Accessibility of Banking Service Interfaces
3. Pending Unresolved Issues/Grievances.

When the third was being discussed, seemingly another employee pulled the phone from her (RM) barging/gate crashing into the conversation and started selling about investment services and soliciting investments. During the switch a five letter slur word challenging the modesty of a female was heard to be hurled at the RM besides a chain of words indicating a few other unprofessional words demonstrating a serious misdemeanour of misogyny and giving a hint that the person could be a potential sexual predator and such persons and/or their gestures could be harmful in a safe workplace environment.

This also construes as a violation of The Vishaka Guidelines that were a set of procedural guidelines for use in India in cases of sexual harassment. They were promulgated by the Indian Supreme Court in 1997 and were superseded in 2013 by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act.

A quick note of registration the call incident have been given a heads-up to the Telecom Department via DND framework to register an incident.    A copy of the complaint would also be sent to MoWCD and Principal Nodal Officer of the financial institution in a goodwill gesture to help the organization control any traces of hostile workspace triggers in the framework.

 

An Open Letter to RBL Bank …

Subject: Distasteful Gesture of RBL Bank, Untrustworthy/No-Confidence in Customer Care Executive and Sub-Par banking standards

Message:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I understand that RBL Bank has come up from a humble and modest beginning from Kolhapur with the name as Ratnakar Bank Ltd and then rebranded itself with a global identity as RBL Bank. However of late a number of gestures from RBL Bank is considered hostile for ethical banking business. A few of them are shared with the executive team here as a goodwill gesture to investigate into a feasibility study of imparting due renaissance and reformation into the banking practices.

1. The customer care team do not seem to any bank banking knowledge. Even basic concepts like transaction dispute, chargeback etc sounds like Latin and Greek for them.
2. Time taken for credit posting to transactions is humongous and customer care team (as outlined in (1) above) is absolutely useless in pursuing the progress of the same.
3. Potential insiders in RBL bank allegedly sell customer information to unethical telemarketers for Cold Calling at odd times.
4. RBL Bank team does not seem to be aware of telecom regulations in India and/or the requirement to be statutorily compliant with the same. All it matters for them is quantitative measure of calls made and leads generated.
5. Tie-ups with third grade companies like Bajaj Finance and their group could be ruining the good historical image of RBL Bank.
6. Social Media team of RBL team does not see to be manned by live persons but half-tested buggy bots considering the type of responses and messages posted by them.
7. Even for the calls made by customer care in request to our grievances through one of the channels, the following shortcomings are observed:
   1. Communication skills of the caller is extremely dis-satisfactory.
   2. The caller keeps bombing regardless of the call preferences in a deep urge to close the service request/ticket. The objective seems to be closing the ticket within SLA quantitatively instead of qualitative measure of the response to be tendered on the grievance in question.
   3. As a quick litmus test today I just put the caller muted for a while to see how they responded with their bad communication. The call ran up to 42 minutes. Good thing is that it could have generated some revenue for the bleeding telecom provider (Vodafone) which I guess was the communication line used by the calling unit.
8. RBL Online Banking when logged on always says there is no account linked to the customer. This particularly happens when there is no active bank account and only credit card. I have been trying to get this message ringing to your team but I guess they are not interested to resolve the technical issues in the website.
9. RBL Online Banking also does not have a way to show the Unbilled Transactions (Credit and Debit) besides the current outstanding (including unbilled).

Hence on a goodwill gesture I would like to bring these shortcomings to your attention and desk.

 

Plight of Voicemail in India

Voicemail is for sure a definitive productivity enhancement tool that is intended as a rich time-saver to prevent leakage of our productivity in gossips that we do not need to be actively part of. Furthermore it ensures we do not get the risk of talking to Scammers and Spammers as these are effectively used as /dev/null by the Voicemail system.

However even the premiere telecom service providers in India have not been able to manage these Voicemail services perfectly. We have four operators currently providing telecom services in India. Here is how Voicemail is treated by each of them.

1. BSNL has effectively removed the Voicemail from their offerings in 2015
2. Reliance Jio does not even have any Voicemail product right from its inception in 2016
3. Vodafone had a broken voicemail system. They claimed to have completely revamped the same post the identity merge with Idea as Vi. But the newer one is not well documented. Despite being a unified identity the customer care has lame excuses like if you have Idea SIM then Voicemail services are not available. Also the pricing of the service is simply prohibitive.
4. Airtel has a partially working Voicemail system. They have FTN separate for each telecom circle but none of these are publicly documented. The agents do not have a knowledge about the services. When we ask about the same it all goes via a trial and error method.
1. For Tamil Nadu circle the activation itself gives Error through USSD code
2. For Tamil Nadu circle the activation through text gives a blocked message
3. For Tamil Nadu circle the activation through CustomerCare results in Service Request closure with a wrong FTN being configured to the account.
4. The CustomerCare claim that we need to deactivate all call forwarding for Voicemail to work. However the essence of Voicemail itself is selective call forwarding like ‘Unreachable’, ‘Busy’ and ‘Unanswered’ situations. Also the deactivation itself does not work giving a service error.
5. The short code 52555 is supposedly toll-free but not universally available on all Airtel circles and in National Roaming even on same circles. During on network Roaming you are expected to call a full access number at a premium charge which Airtel refuses to reimburse too.

 

Airtel DTH Support Executives in Chennai hell-bent to scam users

 

Recently I had a requirement to have the remote control of Airtel HD Set Top Box has the current one had worn out due to its age. Despite my request loud and clear about where to order the same and its price, the social media team was particular about sending a service engineer charging a steep visitation charge for the same.

The clarification sent again remained unanswered till the date of this publishing.

 

Hence I dropped a subsequent email to Airtel Digital TV support with a cc to DTH Nodal Team. After a couple of days I had some one assigned as a service engineer. Despite me trying to reach the person for clarifications he never responded back in time. And when he responded he was citing a charge of 400 but then tried to cover it up for remote control for Airtel XTreme. He still wanted the visiting charges over and above this amount.

When the issue was again escalated to Airtel, the service engineer changed who maintained the same stand but this person then dropped off and recommended a non-Airtel version in the neighborhood for 80 (Not sure if he was sarcastic or was redirecting to another malicious substandard product). On a goodwill gesture this was again referred back to Airtel Nodal Team.

Now another lady talked to me from a service support team who after a bargain was offering another brand for 150. When I told not interested and cancel the request she wanted to spell out the OTP she will send to cancel the request. And the OTP which came was the signon OTP for Airtel Thanks app. Not sure why she wanted to signon to Airtel Thanks app impersonating me.

 

 

 

 

Pathetic state of Government Veterinary Polyclinic (Tallakulam, Madurai).

 

Animals have right to be treated for emergencies. The clinic is run in a very unprofessional and unethical way. You will find syringes with needles all over the place. The same table is used for parvo infected and healthy dogs. Proper disinfection is not done leading to cross infection. Night emergencies are not attended regularly.

In today’s incident, a lady who brought her two pet dogs affected with Parvo and in a serious condition had to wait for two hours until a complaint was escalated to higher authorities in Chennai. Only after that the doctor came and treated the sick dogs. They took a photo of the treatment to cover up their blunders and unethical behaviour. This is sheer medical negligence and should not go unpunished.

The in-charge of the clinic should be held responsible for death of any pets due to negligence. Blaming the pet parent is very wrong as she brought her pets as soon as they fell sick. She was in tears. She was relieved only after they were treated.

The latest update is that one of the pet succumbed to the infection. I wouldn’t even spare to file a police complaint on the particular doctor(s) who were responsible for Negligence of Duty and I would consider even filing a murder complaint on them since I feel it is akin a cold-blooded murder.

We have this incident reported to the Mudhalvarin Mugavari (the Chief Minister’s Special Cell) of Tamil Nadu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YouTube Video:  https://youtube.com/shorts/aYnagCP2WBc?feature=share

 

Does #TamilNadu has two horns on its head?

Of late there has been particularly different issues regarding an ethical administration point of view from one of the southern states of India precisely (Tamil Nadu). Among the 29 states and 9 Union Territories only Tamil Nadu departments seems to be adopting a unique practice when dealing with citizen petitions like tagging it as Accepted and Rejected.

It looks like this is giving a unique teeth to the bureaucratic staff who in order to cover up their odd doings tag the petition has Rejected even though there is a valid response which conveys the meaning as otherwise. I have enclosed a sample from HRCE department for the kind reference of the Office of Prime Minister. Honestly I don’t find any value add of this string literal other than a perceived attitude of those staff in covering up the number of complaints against them.

This is not a one-off case but is seen prevalent from GDP Portal, CmCell and Police Department also.

The sample response below was given for swindling temple money at Marundheeswar Temple, Thiruvanmiyur.

 

Specific Acts of Omission and Commission by Tamil Nadu State Department escalated to @rashtrapatibhvn

A petition has been sent to The Office of President of India today citing a bunch of omission and commission of pertinent state departments of Tamil Nadu in Greater Chennai during the calendar periods of 2015 to 2016.  The petition opened up with a regret for the delay in reopening the petition considering overwhelmed with mundane tasks and other works.

The gist of the current petition was about another petition which was filed to the office in the month of March 2015 regarding blatant abuse of Whatsapp by certain officials in the state department and a related one in a neighboring state.  The local operations had the temerity to tag the then petition was Rejected.  Despite tagging petition as rejected it was still transferred to my the then jurisdiction police station and I was compelled to visit them once hot summer afternoon in May 2015 to again explain them every bit of the complaint. I even suggested them that this petition might be better off to be examined at depth by a Cyber expert and Cyber forensic team and not by ordinary plain vanilla law and order team. I have tried my best to explain the importance of defensive cyber crime teams for ever-rising internet age complaints.  However they categorically turned down my requests and regretted that the state department did not have any such facility with them and hence forced me to write a letter addressing their head to rescind the petition with a specific note indicating waiver of any remedial step to be taken by them along with a waiver for them to respond to the petition. Precisely I was forced to annul my petition by duress.

Despite the above completed in June 2015 itself again in the month of March 2015, I was facing piquant calls from these people asking them to give another letter for annuling the petition. I do not understand what happened to the original one. Since I was out of station I had to have the same emailed to them to get the operation closed.

Despite the above turnaround one of the authority had tried to meet my Senior Citizen parent in later part of 2015 and was telling that when he was having discussion me regarding rescinding the petition as in 3, I was warned not to compare their operations with other states people they are superior. Whereas in actual context I was literally bugged and requested to withdraw claiming total incapacitated capability of their operations to look into cyber crimes. I am also shocked to hear about the superior comparison of them against their other state peers.

This unnecessary discussion with my senior citizen parents and my apartments has caused much recurring mental agony for me because they cite this whenever I needed to rise anti graft petitions and I would like the erring teams to give an unconditional apology on these grounds.

Response Needed:

1) Why the petition is tagged Rejected
2) Despite REJECTED state why I was harassed twice for rescinding my original complaint.
3) What is the #Superior comparison of their operations with other state peers?

 

 

This @Idea bug might deplete low balance holders still to stooping low…

For a few years I have been holding this Idea Mobile number in Chennai circle. Last weeks ago I found an acute technical glitch which would have made me incurred additional expenses for no fault of fine. I was steeply running out of balance and I was trying to exercise Ask Talktime feature from my friend. The Ask Talktime feature was asking the phone number and the phrase was so incomplete that I thought it was asking my phone number and it accepted. Then it sent out a message from my own number to me asking whether I can accept talktime transfer request (precisely it is trying to transfer talktime from my account to same account at a charge). Ideally when I entered my own number it should have done a validation check that MDN is same as requesting MDN and should have stopped the process with an alert.

I have tried explaining this to Idea 198 but they do not seem to be understanding the intricate technicality of the issue and  hence before this bug takes a toll on some one else balance I have reported the same to Department of Telecommunications vide DOTEL/E/2019/14135

 

Petition to Government of Tamil Nadu to free up public commuting facilities from encroachers

The following petition was submitted today to State Transport Department for the benefit of citizens of Chennai.  We would keep you posted with responses from department for the same.

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This applies to whole of Greater Chennai and Chennai Suburban. In almost all of the MTC bus stops, entry and exit of MTC terminus private autorickshaws have come up with (un-)authorized stands and some of them are spotted with as affiliated to some weird trade unions. Additionally the two wheeler bikers are again causing road rash, races and stunts when the bus comes to the bus stop. I do not understand the logic of why they want to get injected between the bus and the bus stop preventing passengers from seamlessly and smoothly boarding the buses. Somewhere around in the discussion forum on the Internet a few months ago a community poster was mentioning that there might be some unholy nexus between these elements for reasons best known to them.

I would like State Transport Corporation to take up this issue with Metropolitan Transport Corporation, Traffic Enforcement and Law & Order across the city to curtail this menace of obstructing passengers from boarding the buses. It is unfortunate that when there is Article 353 to protect government servants from any type of assault preventing them from discharging their duties, there is no protective sheath for genuine tax paying citizens of the country to avail the facilities provided by the government which is once again paid for by them.

Disclaimer: The petitioner is severely limited with time due to his work nature. Additionally this is a public advisory petition. Every bit of the information has been duly captured in this complaint document and hence request for depositions to local police stations for extended time for enquiry etc is completely unnecessary and unwarranted. The petitioner may be available on the RMN (Registered Mobile Number) subject to his hectic schedules at his workplace. We would humbly request the cooperation and assistance of investigating personnel in this regard.

If the servicing operators continue to harass the petitioner for more information on call or email it would be construed as their consent to consider their calls as public nuisance and/or harassment and/or unsolicited commercial communication and shall be dealt with extant provisions thereto. We would also like to mention that the servicing operators particularly the law enforcement need not harass the petitioner seeking withdrawal of the petition citing their inability to work on the same and we would like to mention that any such withdrawal requests shall be forwarded to their leadership and we request their leadership to take significant cognizance of such withdrawal requests as demonstrated misdemeanour, gross incompetency and malevolent non compliance and their leadership is advised to initiate maximum disciplinary action against such cadre in their workforce so that such gestures are deterrent for similar offenders. We appreciate your understanding and assistance in this matter.

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@airtelindia has looted 101 ₹ by citing flimsy reasons, fake assurances and false promises

Recently I had a request for balances transferred from xxx0796 and xxx6014 to xxx7856. Just two months ago I had a similar request and they completed but this time they were citing flimsy reasons each time and postponing it.  Some of the various reasons each executive was giving was

1. System is not working. We will call later
2. Need to convert to postpaid for this facility
3. There is no such facility.
4. Previous request was done as a one time gesture

After a hiatus of 3 weeks they told me to do as multi-transactions myself using star 141 hash and then they will reimburse the charges. The total service charges which I had paid is 101 but now they have started to crib telling citing the following set of flimsy reasons

1. Both the transferor numbers are ported out and hence the history is deleted. So unable to verify the balance records
2. We do not have any such confirmation
3. There is no such facility
4. Please visit a store for the same. (And when the store is visited they are asking to write to backend)

A note has been filed with Department of Telecommunications vide DOTEL/E/2019/12639