Looking to buy a Mutual Fund ? Most investors into Mutual Funds buy on the basis of recommendations from friends, from the broker / agent, or from some research. But if you want to buy a Mutual Fund, there are a lot of variables such as
- the industry into which the fund is investing,
- the aggressive / cautious nature of the Fund,
- the past history of the Fund Manager,
- the level of customer service orientation of the fund house
In a lot of cases, people overlook such information and then later are not happy with the performance of the Mutual Fund (for example, they bought an aggressive Fund that is more risky, and were shocked when it fell more than a cautious fund at the time of a crash).
There is a link on Economic Times that seeks to explain some of these concepts:

It is important to be well informed before you invest in a mutual fund on the premise that the fund will deliver. And when it comes to a fund in which you have already invested, it is even more crucial to be well up on numbers and facts. Sectoral allocation is also important. Excessive exposure to one sector can mar the returns if the sector underperforms. It is also important to compare the stock exposure norms and sectoral allocation over a sustained period of time. This gives you an idea as to how the funds have been deployed and the risk associated with such portfolio diversification.
Two key ratios you must keep in mind are portfolio-turnover ratio and expense ratio.
Portfolio-turnover ratio is a measure of churning the fund has undergone while the expense ratio tells us about the cost of managing the funds.
Higher portfolio turnover is seen in opportunities fund and in more actively-managed fund. Value funds are expected to show a low-portfolio turnover.

Read the whole article, and search for more information regarding such investments. Even though learning about Mutual Funds and their details could take some more time, it is worthwhile since you should make your investment when you are an informed investor. This will also help you to make decisions about investment or withdrawal in a better manner, and make you more money overall.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3279973.cms

There have been numerous cases in the past where patients have complained that hospitals have been lax in handing over their medical records to them. Hospitals have used this delay as a deterring factor if the patient wants to move to another hospital. In cases where there is a dispute between the patient and the hospital, the patient typically feels that the hospital also uses such delays to get the time to doctor the records. In order to provide the patient with their complete set of medical records fast, the National Consumer Court passed a directive that henceforth hospitals will have to provide either the patient or the authorized representative of the patient, their complete medical records within 72 hours of receiving a request for such records. This judgment is bound to provide relief to patients who would otherwise struggle with trying to get such records from the hospital:

MUMBAI: In a landmark order, the national consumer disputes redressal commission has made it mandatory for all medical practitioners and hospitals across the country to provide the entire medical records of a patient to him\her or the authorised nominee or legal authorities concerned within 72 hours of the demand.
Simultaneously, the commission asked the Medical Council of India to promulgate a comprehensive notification. Accordingly, a week ago, the MCI directed medical practitioners and hospitals to provide the medical records of a patient within three days of the request. “In any set of circumstances, hospitals\medical practitioners shall hand over the medical records of the patient to him or his relatives within 72 hours,” the MCI said in its circular.

This is an excellent judgment, and will go a long way in making sure that the relationship between the doctor and the patient remains smooth, and does not clouded with extraneous factors. Once the patient realizes that the records are easily available and that the hospital is duty bound to provide them, they will start asserting their rights and no longer be fearful that the hospital will try to delay things if they want to change hospitals.

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 almost sounds racist, unless you put yourself in the shoes of the person who has undergone such conditions. A British holidaymaker, responding to a tourist brochure, booked rooms at a hotel in Greece, and when he went their with his family, he found that the hotel was full of Germans, with only 25 of the 700 families being English, and most of the other 675 being German. Now this was not a reason for the complaint that he made, but it was the fact that all the facilities, the reps over there, all of this communication was in German and he could not enjoy his stay:

A British holidaymaker was awarded compensation by a court because there were too many German tourists at the hotel he booked in Greece, newspapers reported on Saturday. David Barnish, 47, paid 4,000 pounds (5,100 euros, 8,000 dollars) to take his wife and three daughters to a resort in Kos, but the family were unable to take part in entertainment or children’s activities because they were only organised in the German language, the Daily Telegraph and Sun reported.
Barnish sued holiday company Thomson for breach of contract, claiming it had failed to disclose that the Grecotel Park hotel was used almost exclusively by Germans. A court in the central English city of Stoke awarded him 750 pounds in compensation after a judge ruled that customers at a hotel featured in an English-language brochure should be provided for in their own language, the reports said.

This was an interesting case, and was substantiating the consumers cannot be taken for a ride. If they are not getting what they have paid for, then they can complain and get their complaints heard.

Typically, Indian Railways has not been known in the past for its customer oriented nature; to get information, you need to either queue up at long lines for information, or dial a number where there is no guarantee that you will get through. However, change can happen to anyone, and the Indian Railways is trying its best to go modern.
So, in addition to being able to book tickets through the internet or mobile at the IRCTC site, customers can also subscribe to receiving alerts for changes in the ticket status. Say, you are waitlisted and want to find out your ticket status, then the service will send a SMS when there is any change in the status. This can be very useful since it is not so easy to find this information in an alternate way.
Details are available at this site.
- Services are provided currently by Airtel, Hutch, Idea, MTNL Delhi, MTNL Mumbai, Reliance and Tata. Subscribers have to register for this service by sending an SMS to 7245 with short code “PNR” followed by a space and the 10 digit PNR number.
eg : PNR 1234567898.
- PNRs of all reserved Railway tickets can be registered for this service irrespective of the mode of booking (Internet/Counter/Agents)
- On successful registration for this service, periodic SMS alerts would be sent to the registered Mobile numbers, with the status of the PNR at that time. The periodic alerts would be sent as per the following schedule :
a. On the 8th, 3rd, 2nd day and the day of journey (the days being counted with the day of journey as day 1) - the alert would be dispatched after 0700 hrs.
b. On the date of journey, the alerts would be sent as per the schedule below :
i. For trains with scheduled departure between 0001 hrs. to 1200 hrs. the scheduled PNR alerts would go after 2200 hrs. on the previous night (the day before the journey).
ii. For trains with scheduled departure between 1200 hrs. to midnight the alerts would be dispatched after 0700 hrs. on the same day.
- In case a ticket status is confirmed between any of these scheduled alerts, then an SMS alert would be sent as per the schedule, and the next SMS alert would be sent on the date of journey only.
- In case a ticket status is found as ‘Cancelled or Modified’ during any of these scheduled alerts, no more alerts would be sent.