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.

 

Disappointing Visit to Jeyachandran Textiles, Pallikaranai

I had an opportunity to visit Jeyachandran stores in Pallikaranai  on Sunday (3rd January 2021) being an ardent shopper of their T Nagar outlet and this outlet in its initial days.

I had a small hiatus in mall visits due to the recent pandemic situation prevailing in the country opting to stay low profile and yesterday visited the Pallikaranai showroom. I felt a lot of shortcomings that have crept into the stall which is very disappointing on the fine fabric of Jeyachandran business conglomerate. Here are my observations from the current visit.

11.45 AM. The Food Court staff were busy in their chit-chat with colleagues. Items were not getting readied and asked at what time Puffs etc will be ready the answer was ‘We do not know’. The counter opposite serving hot coffee had a similar reply on when the coffee would be ready for vending.

A good number of items when asked for assistance in locating the reply was an immediate ‘Not in Stock’ without even lifting the little finger to ask a peer and/or to locate across the aisles/racks. Here are the few instances:

• Pet Bowls
• Shaving Sets
• Vegetable Peeler
• Toys  Section

The supervisor on the floor where Pet Bowls were responded as No Stock proved no better than another clown since he was telling that is the first time he is hearing about pet bowls. Not sure how such people were brought onboard to such a leading mall.

Additionally the way these people responded made one feel as if the store is closing the business/outlet and only trying to get the existing things to go away without replenishing the stocks.

After purchasing a few footwear,  we had a delay at the billing counter as they were busy singing songs besides playing some games on mobile for a while and after 2 to 3 minute wait only we were responded with a billing option.

When exiting the store the calendar distribution person proved to be another seasoned hypocrite where some people who seemed to be in his good books were given two to three calendars and despite we having bills from each floor not less than 1000 he was exaggerating the bill expectation and gave one calendar with much demur and delay.

Observed another damage in one of the elephant’s tail and tried to report to the staff to see if they can report to the management and get it rectified. Again a callous who cares response from them.

Also the elephant pedestal is being used as stock loading area instead of keeping it decorated with some plants and other aesthetic touch.

Enforcement of Wear Mask was also very sparingly observed.

 

A revolutionary way to start the morning afresh with @SuprDaily

The daily morning needs for every family at times become chaotic particularly when something like milk is getting delayed or egg or bread is running out of stock in the kitchen.  We recently came to know of a service called SuprDaily which has its origin in Mumbai but now expanded its service to most parts of the country.

All you need is an app developed by them running on a supported platform (Android or IOS) and a UPI enabled bank account to order the same. Unlike local milk vendors you are no longer restricted to particular brands only. A host of diversified brands are available to be searched and ordered on the app at the price mentioned by the manufacturer themselves.

And even the delivery is impeccable.  Though the ETA for delivery is 7 AM, they have a hardworking folks who turn to your doorsteps right before 5 AM itself. And even when they come early there are options for them whether to ring the bell or just slide in the delivery items at your door (to ensure your sleep is not disturbed).

And when you are outbound for a vacation for a few days it is quite easy to pause the deliveries at the comfort of the app. Orders are accepted for processing for a day till 2230 hours the previous night. Support is impeccably fast via IVRS, Social Media and App based chat.

Additionally a slew of offers thrown now and then helps customer’s give a soothing comfort to their inflation-strained wallets. Let us wish SuprDaily more success in their business. And the success of this startup is more clear since they have been recently engaged as a subsidiary to Swiggy it seems.

 

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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A lot of changes with UIDAI Aadhar…

Self Service Update Portal:

An year ago we can update quite a number of details through Aadhar SSUP (Self Service Update Portal) whereas now the only thing it allows is Change of Address and that too after attaching a self attested document.

I was trying to see if mobile number could be changed with due OTP verification at both mobile numbers but since it was not available I raised a query through PgPortal and the response from Aadhar team is as below.

Dear Deepak, With reference to your grievance filed online on Public Grievance portal, it is brought to your kind notice that, except address updation field rest of the fields have been removed from SSUP in order to avoid fraudulent cases. Hence, mobile updation cannot be carried out through SSUP. Kindly visit the nearest Aadhaar enrolment centre and update your mobile number. Aadhaar enrolments/updations are being carried out at Banks, Post offices, Talk/Municipal Offices etc., in order to provide hassle free service. Kindly visit any Aadhaar enrolment centre and get your mobile number updated.

Virtual IDs

Another innovation to protect Aadhar number from being misused is Virtual ID which can be regenerated at ease. Like Credit Cards it is a 16 digit number. And this is printed in eAadhar Letter as well.  Virtual ID numbers allow limited use of Aadhar data when given to a service provider instead of exposing whole lot of information that may be potentially misused and abused by a service provider and/or their agents.

 

Dealing with Whatsapp related Abuses (as Group Administrators)

Recently there was an article in HindustanTimes regarding Jharkand Police Department releasing directions on Whatsapp group. Some of the points they stipulate are non implementable. The points were:

1. What was suggested? Delete the message.
   What is the problem? We can not delete the message as they are delivered to individual phones of the users. Alternatively Whatsapp should support a feature for admins to remote delete similar to Telegram Messenger.
2. What was suggested? Reporting the User.
   What is the problem? Some of the states have incompetent cyber cell who do not understand the essence of cyber laws. They simply start harassing the complainants to withdraw the complaint and close the files.

V&R wrote back to Jharkand Police Department to clarify on the above issues through the office of Prime Minister. The response received is here under:

 

Way Lay Transgender at Elcot taken into custody after V&R petition

Way back on 20th December 2016 we had reported to Government of Tamil Nadu regarding transgender menace near Elcot IT Park complex. The original petition and its response from the authorities is given under.

Text of the Petition:

During weekend days particularly the afternoon of Saturday and Sundays when the crowd at the bus stop is thin, a transgender is haunting the location of Elcot Sozhinganallur bus stop pestering people waiting at the bus stop for moolah. The transgender is touching the people at odd locations in an embarassing way making it very uncomfortable for anyone. Kindly take steps to help commuters at this bus stop free from the transgender menace.

Response for the Petition:

Accepted. This petition enquiry of the Inspector J10 Semmencheary Police Station. In his enquiry report has been stated that the petitioner matter was already Case Registered in J10 PS Cr.No.1404/2017 U/s 75CP Act and Counter petitioner Nisha Age 22 S/o Barathi Thirunangai arrested after bail release. This message informed to the petitioner in future the above matter is maintained beat police and beat officer day and night. This petition may please be filed.

 

Wrong Website Naming for TN HRCE

HR CE department is part of Government of Tamil Nadu. Hence it would be a good gesture to have a website like

http://www.tnhrce.gov.in/

However they are having a website like

http://www.tnhrce.org/ 

.ORG is normally for non-profit NGO organizations in Internet.  We have sent a petition to Government of Tamil Nadu towards this vide GOVTN/E/2017/01478

 

Sorry state of Temple Pond belonging to Sri Sthalasyana Perumal (Mahabalipuram)

We have an observation from Tamil Murasu ePaper dated 26th May 2017 page 5 that the temple pond belonging to Sri Sthalasyana Perumal (Mahabalipuram) is in a dilapidated condition. We have escalated this issue to the office of Prime Minister, Ministry of Water Resources and Government of Tamil Nadu besides an email to the HRCE commissioner (info@tnhrce.org)

Petition Reference Numbers:

1. Office of Prime Minister PMOPG/E/2017/0302340
2. Ministry of Water Resources MINWR/E/2017/00375
3. Government of Tamil Nadu GOVTN/E/2017/01477

The newspaper clipping is shared below.

 

Clarification to the office of @Ashok_Gajapathi regarding dis-honor of National Flag of India in @aaichnairport ‏

A couple of weeks back I was transiting to Pallavaram by connecting at Metro and switching to MTC from Tirusulam bus stand. The time was almost 1830 hours but the national flag on the airport complex was not taken down.

I believe our National Flag code of conduct stipulates that it should be hosted during sunrise and taken down at sunset. One peer commuter was telling that since the lighting ambience is more the flag is always on the brighter area and perhaps this may be a source of exemption.

A clarification has been sent to Ministry of Civil Aviation dated 2nd May 2017 vide MOCAV/E/2017/00870

Update from Ministry on 5th May 2017 is below.

The reply of Airport Director, Chennai is as under – In connection with the reference made of giant National flag being flown at Chennai Airport, it is to mention that it’s a 100ft. tall monumental flag illuminated from ground and is permitted to be flown in accordance with provisions/guidelines contained with Flag foundation of India, similar flags are flown at other places across India and is not lowered after dusk, no constitutional provisions are violated in this regard. In view of above, matter stands disposed off.