Consumer Rights » Malls

Lost and found at Mall

ashish — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:39:20 +0000

This was an incident that made me feel that there are places that care about customers. The spouse and me had gone to the Pacific Mall in East Delhi for dinner. Apparently at that time, the spouse dropped a wallet over there containing some cash, credit cards and some money. This miss was not discovered until the next day when she realized that her wallet was missing.
Lot of hue and cry, but in the end, we decided that the mall (actually the food court in the mall) was the likely place where the wallet was dropped, and she decided that she would go there and check it out. So she went to the food court in the mall, and when she explained the situation, it was very gratifying to hear their reply.
They have a process to deal with customer lost and found, and the previous evening, one of the staff over there had found the wallet and turned it in, and so, after a few queries, they handed the wallet over to here. Apparently this has happened a number of times, and in fact, if they are not able to return items, it was because other patrons would have found the item and pocketed it. It felt good to see a place caring about its customers after the customer has actually left.

Photography in malls

ashish — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 07:28:27 +0000

I never did understand this issue. I had gone with some friends to the Center Stage Mall in Noida, and since I was meeting these friends after some time, we had a camera along to capture some of these moments. So we met, had lunch and were generally roaming around leisurely, re-living old times. Suddenly, what do I see ? A security guard comes up to me, and grimly tells me that photograhy is not permitted inside malls.
On my query as to why photography is not permitted (it’s not like I was taking photographs inside an air force stattion), I was given the standard reason about security concerns. I can carry a camera inside a mall, but i cannot take photographs. You can see every corner, just can’t photograph it. I argued for a while, but very difficult to argue with a security guard when he has been given an order. And I didn’t have the time to find a mall manager to argue with.
This whole episode left a slightly bitter feeling, and now I find that I avoid the mall. I wonder whether malls have some sort of consumer rights people who try to talk to people who have had bad experiences ?

Malls and customer friendly nature

ashish — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 13:04:56 +0000

India has suddenly sprouted a large number of malls. These have come up in the last few years, and now are spread through the city. They are glitzy, some of them have adequate parking, and some of them actually can be pretty good in terms of movie experience and eating out.
But, they do slip up sometimes. One major area that they slip up is in terms of catering to customers who visit the mega retail stores that they have (example, Big Bazaar, Spencer’s Hyper, etc). I have been to a few of them. Let me recount a few examples. In Indirapuram, the Food Bazaat is in the basement, so one I did a fair amount of shopping and came out with a number of backs in a shopping cart. When I tried to get in the lift with the cart, I was refused by the guard. I asked him for options, for which he told me none. So I hefted the bags in some way and carried them some distance to the car. It was only later that I discovered that there is a ramp that can be used, but maybe the ramp was not ready then since it was early days.
Another example, EDM in East Delhi. This mall has a lot of parking around the building. After a hard session of shopping at Big Bazaat, the exit had a sign that shopping carts to be left at that point. If you want to take the shopping cart out, then you need to go to another level and exit from the basement. Another 5 minutes of extra effort. And for all that, not allowed to take the shopping cart to the car, but keep the cart at the side, get the car over there for loading, all the while praying that some impatient car driver does not appear behind you.
I have a few more experiences like this, all of them leading to some amount of dis-satisfation.