Citizens having to deal with the Government normally complain most about the myriad forms, the determined blocking nature of the bureaucracy, as well as the amount of corruption involved even to clear matters that should normally get cleared easily. The RTI Act was a good step in that direction, but there is still lots of improvement pending. One of the initiatives by the Delhi Government in this direction is the establishment of a website where citizens can log issues related to grievance with works of the Delhi Government. There is some amount of cynicism about whether this is related to the forthcoming elections, but if this becomes a success and the grievances of people are resolved, then it would be a great thing.

The website is http://www.155345.in/ (AAP KI SUNWAI).

The list of departments that can be reached with this grievance website is a comprehensive list:

A And U Tibbia College
Account Department NDMC
Accounts MCD
Acharya Shri Bhikshu Govt. Hospital
Administrative Reforms
Advertisement MCD
Agricultural Marketing Directorate
Agriculture Mkt. Board of Delhi

Read more…

It was time for a treat, and we were all looking forward to a good lunch. So off we headed (all 12 of us) to the largest mall in Noida - The Great India Mall in Noida. It has a good top floor full of eating options. You get a Food court (food is so-so), a once good vegetarian restaurant (Yatra - all you can eat, but the quality level has gone down), another great Indian restaurant Rajdhani (too much crowd trying to get in), a TGIF without liquor (not worth it without drinks), a great and value-for-money place Pind Balluchi (30 minutes waiting, there were 4 ladies kitties going on), and sundry other places such as KFC, other fast food places, a fine dining place, coffee and tea places, and so on.
Eventually after not getting a place at Pind Balluchi and walking out of TGIf after being told that drinks were not available, we went to Nirula, it is the safe place after all and we thought that this would be an acceptable alternative (big mistake). The menu does not have many options, but this was just the start. In this hot environment, their cold drink machine was out of order and we had lesser alternatives.
We settled ourselves into 2 tables and ordered the veg and non-veg starters. Service seemed to be a bit slow, but we were in a nice mood and decided to wait. Then we got some of the non-veg dishes, and they were not exactly the best. The chicken chop was over-burnt and not having much of a taste, the veg platter was rejected because one of the kebabs was smelling bad (bad quality control and bad over-sight); when we returned the order and canceled the order, still another waiter got us a replacement dish - by then people were starting to get disgusted.
How can you advertise something and give something else ? The hot chocolate fudge was shown in a great glass and looked a decent quantity, but when we got it, it was in a paper cup and did not look anything like what the photo was. And then we started to get the main courses - the pizzaz were not appetising, only the burger and footlong was okay. People who had ordered a separate piece of chicken (a leg piece) actually rejected the stuff after a bite, it was totally bland. Same was the case with people who had ordered the chicken platters, since the dishes were bland. People were incredulous as to how you could spoil something like a tandoori chicken.
We were laughing at this horrible party, and decided that this just did not cut it. the treat needs to be repeated at a better place, and Nirulas was now on the blacklist (including other people in our company who would ask us). They even did not have material for feedback and we had to ask for it.
I want to ask readers ? What can you do when you get such bad quality at an apparently good place ? What can you do to register your disgust and unhappiness other than avoid this place again ?

Public Utilities need to be more consumer friendly. A good thing to say, right ? But it is very necessary. We all depend on public utilities such as the electricity generation and transmission, water works, sewage handling, etc as absolutely essential for a basic level of comfort in the cities. In most times, we have very little contact with these utilities in terms of need for visiting them for complaints or resolving of some disputes, but when such a need arises, it is typically found that most of these utilities lack in terms of being consumer-friendly and understanding the concerns and difficulties faced by normal citizens. One would expect a higher level of courtesy and understanding than what we normally find. Take a loot at the behaviour of Lucknow’s electricity generating utility:

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Electricity Supply Administration’s (Lesa) high-handedness and the penchant for blaming consumers for any defect in meters has drawn flak from denizens (read consumers) of the state capital. The consumers want necessary changes in the method of meter installation and the way Lesa treats consumer whose meter is found defective.
“They usually come without any notice, apparently in their bid to make fast bucks from a hapless consumer,” charged Sanjay Mukherjee (43), a government servant and a resident of Alambagh. He demanded that the authority should install ‘pool meters’ (a common meter) from where connections could be given to individual consumers. “They can then come and check any time of the day. No individual would be targeted in that case,” he added.

It is necessary for the concerned authorities and Government functionaries to be much more responsive and understanding of the needs and concerns for citizens. And it is really a must that the utility should not automatically assume that a citizen is out to cheat or steal power.

These are some more Do not Call registries for different banks as well as their complaints page / customer policies

CitiBank India Do not call Registry

Citibank India complaint form

ABN Amro Do not call service

ABN Amro complaint form

SBI Bank Complaint form

SBI Bank complaint contact numbers

to get around the menace of tele-marketers trying to sell a bank loan, a credit card or other such banking product in India, consumers now have the option of setting their names in the Do Not call Registry for banks. When putting your name, the bank and its sales agents will not call you, giving you a lot of protection from unwanted callers:

For ICICI Bank, click here

For HDFC Bank, click here

For UTI Bank, click here

In addition, if you want to read about the customer policies of these banks and read about their grievance procedures, click on the links below for the respective banks

ICICI, HDFC Bank, UTI Bank