3 weeks in chennai, still loving it

It has been 3 weeks since I came to chennai… has been a lot of fun inspite of things like mad traffic, not-worse-yet-bad weather and other logistics stuff. Driving in chennai is quite an art, years back people used to complain about a lot of animals on the streets. It is not true anymore.. there are very few cows and stray dogs on the road. But then animals have started driving now.. thats a big problem. Try making a U-turn on any of the roads and you will find people all around you honking, everyone will strive to make it impossible for you to turn and keep going around you – wild animlas at their purest best.

I wish honking becomes a commodity … ie you get to sound horn for 10 times or maximum of 60 seconds in a 1 hr driving experience. After this the horn should be disabled for 30 mins — wow that will be something, is it not? I wish we build roads with lanes such that the lane width is equal to the width of the car or bike and has barricades on each side. I wish we have 3 story fly overs instead of one .. come on politicians, that is triple the profit you can make on the tar, stones usage . I realized some of this while training choclate and sox, my cousin sister’s puppies.. animals need to be trained differently than humans and pitifully thats a large chunk of our driving population.

Cheap labour and the most painful experience… I signed up for Big TV from reliance. people promised to come at 12 PM and then after 50 phone calls from myself ended up at 4 PM. hey, comcast does give a 4 hr window (reminds me of the seinfeld episode) but then they turn up and get the job done. In this case, 2 clowns turn up and finish the dish installation but dont activate the connection. They promise to send another clown the next day to do it and no one comes.. it is apparently a holiday. “bloody fools, you just had to tell me that “, was my reply to them. I am not really hard pressed to watch this… india pounded by aussies on day 1,2 is no great treat. But wanna watch sehwag blasting his way through.

Anyway, not to digress Big TV experience has been a shame and I sent an email to them:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ramasubramanian Ramani <ramasubramanian.ramani@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 10:22 AM
Subject: Big TV experience
To: info@bigtv.co.in

Hello:

I bought BigTV because it is backed by the Reliance brand and regret doing it. I have not had the chance to look at the quality of the telecast yet and thats the problem. Someone called me yesterday and asked me to wait at 12 PM and I waited till 4 PM when 2 people came in and installed the dish in our terrace and brought the wire to the TV. But the ACTIVATION was not done.

I am waiting for the next person to come and activate the setup. This is horrible experience. Maybe you people don’t care as well but I have to bring it your notice and if required all the way to your chairman. A company such as Reliance having a global presence cannot operate in this crappy manner – you have to be the model company for customer service for others to emulate. In my case, all that is required is to tell me a time when someone will come and install it. if they cannot keep that time, all that is required is a phone call so that I can do my work instead of sitting at home for 4 hrs.

If you dont listen to customers like us, I guarantee you will only be Big TV in name and not in your operations and business. we run a business and know the importance of customer service, even though we are much much smaller than you.

Regards

Rama

Valasaravakkam, Chennai

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http://smartfool.wordpress.com/

I dont think they care but then my dear friends, I have to vent all these experiences somewhere..

Inspite of all this, I am loving it here in chennai, feel free in mind, body and soul. Working for my dad and spending time with him has been great. So I would suggest you do the same, 3 mons unpaid is not bad after all, time is limited.

Enjoy.