Dear Friends,
This is in continuation to my earlier posts on the unethical business practices being followed in the private sector. Well to some extent the consumer is also responsible for this state of affairs. Let me give you the example of an experience that I had today. Swati (my wife) and I went out in the evening today. On our way back we felt like having some Chhola Bhatura. We decided to stop at Ritz Continental, which is one of the prestigious resturants of the city, in order to have Chhola Bhatura. When we entered the restuarant, we found that the inside of the place was hot and suffocating. Clearly, the air-conditioning was not working. The resturant was not empty mind you. In fact it was quite full, with a lot of people braving the hot and suffocating interior of the place and eating their snack/dinner in silence. I decided to approach the guy on the cash counter and asked him the reason behind the dead air-conditioning. He had no convincing reply to my query, save "it has been switched off due to some problem". Well, I told him that either he should tell me the exact nature of the problem or he should switch on the ACs. Sensing trouble, he went and switched on the Air Conditioners and, to my surprise, I found that there was nothing wrong with them. Within a few minutes, the interior of the resturant was cool and comfortable. We then sat down and had our Chhola Bhatura in peace. However, all the time I was in the resturant, all I could do was to wonder at the tolerance of our fellow Indians. I was amazed at how willingly and uncomplainingly all these people eating in the Ritz were paying for a facility that was being denied to them not because of any technical snag but due to the greed of the resturant management. In any Air Conditioned eatery, the customer pays not only for the food but also for the ambience, cleanliness, service and Air Conditioning. However, in the Ritz, today, the Air Conditioning was deliberately switched off in order to shortchange the customers and save on the power bills. The cleanliness was also nothing to write home about. But none of the people sitting there complained. Consequently, they were forced to sit there and eat an exorbitantly priced meal in extremely uncomfortable and suffocating conditions.
This uncomplaining and 'adjusting' attitude of Indians is one of the major reasons why the average consumer in India is shortchanged-even robbed-by unscrupulous vendors in broad daylight. The least that we can do as consumers is to complain when we find that the value of our money is being denied to us. In case of substandard goods/service provided to us by a vendor/service provider, the least that we can do is to educate our fellow Indians. Now, with the advent of so many networking sites, it is easy for us to share our experiences as consumers. Each of us now possesses the power to tell hundreds of others about any case of cheating by any vendor/service provider. We can even call for a bycott of such businesses who cheat their customers in order to boost their profits. Friends, I call on all of you to become slightly intolerant. Stop adjusting, Start complaining!!
