Thursday, October 23, 2008
Quota
Life is something we each have only on a short lease. A moment of anger, of madness in relationships, of carelessness, of a rogue gene running amok in your cell and your lease is up.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
HSBC Customer Service
Hello Mrs. Kidwai:I'm holding a HSBC credit card since the time I was student and wasvery happy with the service until recently. The spending limit on mycard is 77,000/- and I have never defaulted in the past. Based on mycredit history the limit was revised multiple times by the bank.
I would like to take your few minutes and bring an issue and based onthat a bigger question to your notice. My bill for the month of March'08 was 30,600 odd and I made a payment of 31,700. I made an excesspayment of 1100/- hoping it would be adjusted in the next billingcycle. My next month (apr 08) purchase on card was 77,995.7/-. Asthere was a excess payment of 1100 on my account the card was notrejected for this spending of 995.7 extra (exceeding the limit of77,000/-). However I noticed I was charged an over limit fee of 500 +tax in my bill. As I was traveling I couldn't contact the bank andadvised my family to pay 77000 which was again excessive payment basedon my calculations:
Total Purchase 77995.7 - Previous Excess Payment (1100) = 76895.7
I made a payment of 77000 which is again excess of Rs 104.3 (77000 -76895.7). In the next month's May 08 bill I noticed the finance chargeof 3033.65 + tax. On seeing that I asked my family to contact the bankand on speaking and explaining the issue the contact center associateMr. Arif committed to reverse the charge of 2500 and also said hewould talk to his manager for reversing all of the other chargers. Hecouldn't reverse the entire amount as his limit was 2500. As I madepurchase of 32760.7 from my card that month and I paid 33000 which isagain excess of 239.93 assuming that the entire overlimit of 3033.65 +tax will be reversed based on Mr. Arif's commitment.
I was back in June and called bank couple of times to check why thecharge is not being reversed completely? I spoke to one of thesupervisors on the floor; she at first didn't show any interest onknowing the history of the charges and went on with the official lineof how the banking system is designed. On my insistence she told methat she will have the call with Mr. Arif retrieved and based on thatwill do the needful and it would require 3 - 4 working days. I keptcalling in between to check the status and after a week realized therewas nothing done to retrieve the call so I spoke to another supervisorand explained the entire history to her. She was polite and helpfuland told me she would have the 500 over limit being reversed which waslevied in March 08. I told her all the other charges are due to me notpaying that over limit fee at first place and hence all the chargesshould be reversed back but she told me she couldn't help. She told meto avoid any further charge I should pay 29987. Based on mycalculation I was again paying extra 600. As part of growing up in amiddle class Indian family I was taught that one should never defaultand always repay all their outstanding hence I paid 29987 to avoid anyfurther charges.
I'm disappointed with this entire episode and think I'm penalized forpaying more than I spend and paying on time. I would like tounderstand from you if this is the message you want to send to yourloyal customers? If someone pays on time(and pays more) you penalizehim and if someone defaults then he is on a higher platform and cannegotiate and settle for a lesser amount. I would like to know if thebank is encouraging more and more customers to become defaulters?
As you know the banking industry inside out my final question to youis: Does my intrinsic middle class family value of always paying thebill on time holds no good in today's banking industry?
I will highly appreciate a response from your side for my questions.
-Thanks,
SD
I would like to take your few minutes and bring an issue and based onthat a bigger question to your notice. My bill for the month of March'08 was 30,600 odd and I made a payment of 31,700. I made an excesspayment of 1100/- hoping it would be adjusted in the next billingcycle. My next month (apr 08) purchase on card was 77,995.7/-. Asthere was a excess payment of 1100 on my account the card was notrejected for this spending of 995.7 extra (exceeding the limit of77,000/-). However I noticed I was charged an over limit fee of 500 +tax in my bill. As I was traveling I couldn't contact the bank andadvised my family to pay 77000 which was again excessive payment basedon my calculations:
Total Purchase 77995.7 - Previous Excess Payment (1100) = 76895.7
I made a payment of 77000 which is again excess of Rs 104.3 (77000 -76895.7). In the next month's May 08 bill I noticed the finance chargeof 3033.65 + tax. On seeing that I asked my family to contact the bankand on speaking and explaining the issue the contact center associateMr. Arif committed to reverse the charge of 2500 and also said hewould talk to his manager for reversing all of the other chargers. Hecouldn't reverse the entire amount as his limit was 2500. As I madepurchase of 32760.7 from my card that month and I paid 33000 which isagain excess of 239.93 assuming that the entire overlimit of 3033.65 +tax will be reversed based on Mr. Arif's commitment.
I was back in June and called bank couple of times to check why thecharge is not being reversed completely? I spoke to one of thesupervisors on the floor; she at first didn't show any interest onknowing the history of the charges and went on with the official lineof how the banking system is designed. On my insistence she told methat she will have the call with Mr. Arif retrieved and based on thatwill do the needful and it would require 3 - 4 working days. I keptcalling in between to check the status and after a week realized therewas nothing done to retrieve the call so I spoke to another supervisorand explained the entire history to her. She was polite and helpfuland told me she would have the 500 over limit being reversed which waslevied in March 08. I told her all the other charges are due to me notpaying that over limit fee at first place and hence all the chargesshould be reversed back but she told me she couldn't help. She told meto avoid any further charge I should pay 29987. Based on mycalculation I was again paying extra 600. As part of growing up in amiddle class Indian family I was taught that one should never defaultand always repay all their outstanding hence I paid 29987 to avoid anyfurther charges.
I'm disappointed with this entire episode and think I'm penalized forpaying more than I spend and paying on time. I would like tounderstand from you if this is the message you want to send to yourloyal customers? If someone pays on time(and pays more) you penalizehim and if someone defaults then he is on a higher platform and cannegotiate and settle for a lesser amount. I would like to know if thebank is encouraging more and more customers to become defaulters?
As you know the banking industry inside out my final question to youis: Does my intrinsic middle class family value of always paying thebill on time holds no good in today's banking industry?
I will highly appreciate a response from your side for my questions.
-Thanks,
SD
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
Friendship redefined with time
Sometimes, there's that horrible hour between night and day when the
darkness mirrors your despair, and you just can't sleep. Your mind is at war
with itself and you lie awake worrying about what life may reveal tomorrow.
The questions hit you like a flood. Did you make a mistake in turning down
that new job? Will you be safe on your next trip? Have you saved up enough
to own a house? How aggressive should you be with that manipulative,
mealy-mouthed bully at work? Will the blood tests come back clear? And then
that last, unforgiving, brutal, clincher of a question leaps at you like a
ghost and asks-- will you have to battle this all alone?
But then, you hug your pillow tight, think of your family and friends, and
fend off the phantoms of doom. You know that you are loved. And you are
secure in the knowledge that there are more than a handful of people in your
life who will hold you when you cry, laugh at you when you are foolish and
scream at you when you are wrong.
It's not that friends have dislodged siblings, parents, aunts and uncles in
the lives of emotionally disconnected urbanites. Not at all. Instead, they
have added themselves to the home and hearth to create contemporary India's
version of the joint family. Quite simply, our closest friends are now
inextricably part of our family.
I remember a horrific hospital morning of medical tests just recently. The
only thing that made the needle jabs and the clinical wisdom of the
all-knowing doctors bearable was the reassuring presence of people, just
outside, in the corridor. An aunt, a cousin, and two of my closest friends
were standing by not just for moral support, but also to ease my
hypochondria and propensity for over-reaction. The lines between family and
friends had not just blurred; they were indistinguishable.
American writer Ethan Watters' book Urban Tribes was of course the first to
formally explore this modern notion of kinship. But while he deftly catches
the pulse of a new generation's extraordinary dependence on friendships for
emotional sustenance, I disagree with his defining premise. Watters book
essentially looks only at the lives of the "never married". He examines why
increasingly so many people remain single well into their thirties, and
what's more, don't even seem especially unhappy about it. He argues that the
singletons, who lived away from their homes and hometowns, tackled their
"social wilderness" by spending more and more time together till friendships
had almost evolved into alternative modes of companionship.
But that's America-- a country where you never just drop in unannounced,
where the closest of friends will divide the bill down to the last penny,
where even emotions are circumscribed and defined by a codebook of do's and
don'ts.
Here in the messy, warm, and chaotic embrace of India, things are a little
different. Yes, of course, more and more people (especially women) are
opting to remain single or refusing to just "settle" for second best. And
yes, it's a phenomenon that may overturn conventional family dynamics.
Godmothers, single parents, gay lovers-- the social landscape of a country
once obsessed with the search for a suitable boy is changing dramatically.
That doesn't mean, though, that the outstretched arm of friendship is a
peculiarity of the single life. Whether you live alone, or with someone, the
hurly-burly of modern life has created its own emotional vacuums. The need
to talk, share, laugh, cry, and even grieve is no longer just met by one
person. Once upon a time, the sprawling joint family used to provide a
one-stop answer for these varied needs.So, you went to your grandmother for
buckets of indulgence and fistfuls of toffees doled out of a rusty tin jar;
to your mother if you needed to have a good weep; to your grand-uncle for a
good laugh and anecdotes from a past you would never know; to your father to
learn mathematics and restraint and to your raucous, gossipy cousins to walk
on the wild side.
Today our families and friends blend together to meet those eternal needs.
Between them we identify who to share confidences with, who to talk to for
sage counsel, who to share a drunken evening with, and who to call to hold
our hand at the dentist's. The need for privacy and independence may have
forever ended the idea of disparate relatives sharing a house. But the
nuclear family is looking outwards again.
In the end, it's all about the search for intimacy.
-Courtsey Barkha Dutt
darkness mirrors your despair, and you just can't sleep. Your mind is at war
with itself and you lie awake worrying about what life may reveal tomorrow.
The questions hit you like a flood. Did you make a mistake in turning down
that new job? Will you be safe on your next trip? Have you saved up enough
to own a house? How aggressive should you be with that manipulative,
mealy-mouthed bully at work? Will the blood tests come back clear? And then
that last, unforgiving, brutal, clincher of a question leaps at you like a
ghost and asks-- will you have to battle this all alone?
But then, you hug your pillow tight, think of your family and friends, and
fend off the phantoms of doom. You know that you are loved. And you are
secure in the knowledge that there are more than a handful of people in your
life who will hold you when you cry, laugh at you when you are foolish and
scream at you when you are wrong.
It's not that friends have dislodged siblings, parents, aunts and uncles in
the lives of emotionally disconnected urbanites. Not at all. Instead, they
have added themselves to the home and hearth to create contemporary India's
version of the joint family. Quite simply, our closest friends are now
inextricably part of our family.
I remember a horrific hospital morning of medical tests just recently. The
only thing that made the needle jabs and the clinical wisdom of the
all-knowing doctors bearable was the reassuring presence of people, just
outside, in the corridor. An aunt, a cousin, and two of my closest friends
were standing by not just for moral support, but also to ease my
hypochondria and propensity for over-reaction. The lines between family and
friends had not just blurred; they were indistinguishable.
American writer Ethan Watters' book Urban Tribes was of course the first to
formally explore this modern notion of kinship. But while he deftly catches
the pulse of a new generation's extraordinary dependence on friendships for
emotional sustenance, I disagree with his defining premise. Watters book
essentially looks only at the lives of the "never married". He examines why
increasingly so many people remain single well into their thirties, and
what's more, don't even seem especially unhappy about it. He argues that the
singletons, who lived away from their homes and hometowns, tackled their
"social wilderness" by spending more and more time together till friendships
had almost evolved into alternative modes of companionship.
But that's America-- a country where you never just drop in unannounced,
where the closest of friends will divide the bill down to the last penny,
where even emotions are circumscribed and defined by a codebook of do's and
don'ts.
Here in the messy, warm, and chaotic embrace of India, things are a little
different. Yes, of course, more and more people (especially women) are
opting to remain single or refusing to just "settle" for second best. And
yes, it's a phenomenon that may overturn conventional family dynamics.
Godmothers, single parents, gay lovers-- the social landscape of a country
once obsessed with the search for a suitable boy is changing dramatically.
That doesn't mean, though, that the outstretched arm of friendship is a
peculiarity of the single life. Whether you live alone, or with someone, the
hurly-burly of modern life has created its own emotional vacuums. The need
to talk, share, laugh, cry, and even grieve is no longer just met by one
person. Once upon a time, the sprawling joint family used to provide a
one-stop answer for these varied needs.So, you went to your grandmother for
buckets of indulgence and fistfuls of toffees doled out of a rusty tin jar;
to your mother if you needed to have a good weep; to your grand-uncle for a
good laugh and anecdotes from a past you would never know; to your father to
learn mathematics and restraint and to your raucous, gossipy cousins to walk
on the wild side.
Today our families and friends blend together to meet those eternal needs.
Between them we identify who to share confidences with, who to talk to for
sage counsel, who to share a drunken evening with, and who to call to hold
our hand at the dentist's. The need for privacy and independence may have
forever ended the idea of disparate relatives sharing a house. But the
nuclear family is looking outwards again.
In the end, it's all about the search for intimacy.
-Courtsey Barkha Dutt
Friday, June 27, 2008
Procrastination.......the evil twin of ambition
I have been thinking of starting a blog for quite some time and everyday I tell myself tomorrow is a better day than today. Now that I don’t have any excuse I thought of taking the plunge.
Believe it it’s quite an effort to get over the habit of procrastination. That's the reason I decided to write my first ever blog on procrastination.
Procrastination refers to the habit of putting off any activity till another day or time. Several studies across the globe show that around 95% of world’s population procrastinates. People procrastinate on virtually everything — writing blogs,
filing taxes, visiting doctor for routine checkup, vehicle’s annual service, making lifestyle changes, beginning retirement savings etc etc . In short, everything important.
Procrastination on important issues has serious implications. In this blog I will try to share insight on how to get over procrastination (and hopefully I will walk the talkJ)
To solve procrastination problem, take a piece of paper and write on it in big bold letters, "You are a procrastinator, and you will destroy all your dreams if you do not learn to control your-self!" Keep this in your shirt pocket or anywhere you can see it all the time. Preferably stuck this paper on a wall right in front of where you sit. This will make you constantly aware of it and will keep you away from slipping and remind you not to procrastinate!
Believe it it’s quite an effort to get over the habit of procrastination. That's the reason I decided to write my first ever blog on procrastination.
Procrastination refers to the habit of putting off any activity till another day or time. Several studies across the globe show that around 95% of world’s population procrastinates. People procrastinate on virtually everything — writing blogs,
filing taxes, visiting doctor for routine checkup, vehicle’s annual service, making lifestyle changes, beginning retirement savings etc etc . In short, everything important.
Procrastination on important issues has serious implications. In this blog I will try to share insight on how to get over procrastination (and hopefully I will walk the talkJ)
To solve procrastination problem, take a piece of paper and write on it in big bold letters, "You are a procrastinator, and you will destroy all your dreams if you do not learn to control your-self!" Keep this in your shirt pocket or anywhere you can see it all the time. Preferably stuck this paper on a wall right in front of where you sit. This will make you constantly aware of it and will keep you away from slipping and remind you not to procrastinate!
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