Reliance Communications has opened these chain called Reliance Web Express (in addition to the Reliance World’s that are already there). These smaller offices allow you to get the Reliance connection easily from a place that is closer to you, as these Reliance Web Express can open in smaller places.
But guess what, you cannot cancel your subscription from these places. If you go there, they send you off to a further off Reliance Web. So you can take a connection to start paying money to Reliance but they do not want to make it easy for you to cancel your subscription. How unfriendly can you get ?

The Taj Mahal is one of the biggest tourist monuments that India has, and draws an incredible number of tourists yearly. One would expect that the Taj would be very visitor friendly, while maintaining its status as a protected monument. I went to visit the Taj very recently, and while I do not treat the Taj Mahal as a product with consumer rights, there is plenty that can be done to make it much more tourist friendly.
The Taj has very little infrastructure at the gates to make it more friendly to visitors. There are long lines to get in, with almost no information provided to people about the things they need to do to be able to get in. You have tp keep on asking people about what to do. My experience was something like this: I reached and saw 2 long lines, so me and my spouse got in 1 line. Then we asked a few people and they stated the place to buy the tickets. So I got out of the line while my spouse remained in the line and I wrestled with the line for buying tickets. Finally I got back in line which had advanced some meters. Then after hearing a snippet of conversation, I realized that mobile phones were not allowed, and had to be deposited. So after asking some more people, I stepped out of line and got into a very haphazard line for depositing mobile phones. This was actually a small door inside which there were 2 persons who would pick up the mobile and give a token. You can imagine the time it would take to deposit each mobile and the number of people who could be handled every hour. In addition, another thing which we did not know was that these lines were gender specific, a separate line for women and a separate one for men.
By the time I got done with these lines, my spouse who was in the main line for entry had reached the ticket collector and had to spend out. So we never did see the Taj on that day, instead spending around 2 hours in the various lines outside.
This left me wondering, there must be numerous ways they could improve things. They could have opened more counters for handling people buying tickets, depositing stuff, and for entry. This would have made the process much smoother, but this requires actually thinking about the customer convenience, and one is never sure whether that actually fits in anybody’s thinking. Something much simpler is to have boards/sign in a greater number that explain what is to be actually done for an average tourist, and that would simplify things to a very great degree.

A popular and large soft drink company has come out with a scheme in partnership with the Hindi movie, Dhoom2. The scheme is simple, if you take 2 500ml bottles, then the wrappers for both bottles allow you one poster for the movie. Simple, right ? And how would you expect this to be implemented ? You go buy 2 bottles, and from the place where you buy them, you expect to be able to get the poster from the same place, and not from some vague place far away.
Well, my experience has been contrary to this. I had gone with some friends to a mall in Noida called Shoprix. In the food court, we got 2 such bottles from the Domino’s Pizza stall, and thought that such a poster would be good to take since people are always interested in such poster. So we appraoched the particular stall from which we had bought the bottles, and to no surprise, they declined any knowledge and responsibility of the matter. It was something like, we just sell the stuff, but if you need to get such things, you should contact the cold drink company. This is just great - they are willing to sell the stuff (and I am sure that they are not doing this out of charity, but making a nice margin on this), but not willing to answer queries or anything else that comes out of the stuff that they sell. Not a good experience, and just shows how far India has to go in terms of respecting the needs and wants of a customer, as well as being resposible for what you sell.

I wrote a post some time back about buying an IFB washing machine through a paper ad in the Times of India. I forgot to add a piece to this story which made the whole experience even more interesting (maybe not very positive).
I had this company (IFB) guy coming to my house to install it. Turned out that there is a series of clamping bolts that he had to remove before the washing machine could be started. And for some reason, they were not coming out as easily as had been hoped. Hence, I had the site of the technician using a blade to cut away some pieces of rubber, and then start to remove various parts of the machine right there in order to remove the clamping bolts.
Once all this was done and the machine was installed, came the pitch to sell additional stuff. He proferred a powder that was necessary to run in the machine once in a while to remove scaling (which was additional expense), the connector to connect the machine to the tap was extra (that blew me out, something like buying a motorbike and being told that the pipe connecting the fuel tank to the engine is extra). Then came the clincher, he wanted me to buy additional warranty for the reason that the the spare parts of the machine were more expensive than for other companies, and it would be beneficial for me to actually buy this additional warranty.
What a reason, maybe it will not be a surprise that the next time I will not go and buy an IFB machine.

I wrote a post below about HDFC Bank forcing me to close an account. I have an update, which would have been funny if it was not happening to me. I filled out their closure form, which the branch close to me had some reluctance accepting. They told me words to the effect that they will courier the closure form to the relevant branch, as if I had told them something great to do.
Now what happens today ? I get a letter from HDFC bank which seems to carry some sort of card. I thought at first that this was an unsolicited credit card, but then remembered that the Reserve Bank of India had prohibited banks from sending unsolicited credit cards. So I went ahead and opened the letter, and what did I see ? A debit card for the account for which I had sent a closing form more than 2 weeks back. Incredible, call it the right hand not knowing what the left hand or the mind is doing. I now have a brand new debit card, for an account which has zero balance and which is due to be closed at any point of time. So much for a great bank.