Indian Post better than private courier companies in terms of services

We always keep cribbing about the services of government run institution like schools, college, offices, and hospitals. Reason for it is the lethargic service rendered at these places and the attitude of the people. But with time things are changing for the good. Recently I experienced it.

I had to courier some document back home in Kerala from Bangalore. I usually used Indian Post to send parcels and documents but that day I thought of trying private courier company which promises next day delivery. 

I walked into reputed courier company office and checked if they can courier the documents to my place. They checked the pin code and said we can deliver it tomorrow but it may cost you 190 bugs. Since it was next day delivery I didn’t mind paying the extra amount. I paid them the money and left place assuming promises will be met. It happened on a Monday

Tuesday evening when I was checking the status of the courier I could see it is yet to reach. Till Wednesday afternoon when the courier didn’t reach its destination. I went to the booking office and checked with them about the lacuna, to my utter surprise they told, “Sir I have done the work from my end, it is pending from the receiver side”. I was shocked to hear this blame game from a reputed courier company like theirs. They gave me the number of the office close to my house to enquire about the status of the courier.

When I called that office to check, they said load will come by 4.00 pm and they don’t have their service at the address mentioned by me. I was fuming with anger on hearing it. I told the same statement to the booking officer at the courier company and she told, “they are like that only sir, we have good service in metros but other places the service get delayed”. Ridiculous I asked if you couldn’t deliver it on the promised day why did you charge me so much. Reply this time was “Sir, we did the things from our end if they are not doing it what can we do?”. When I told them, I will escalate the issue, she said, “please do it SIR, only then they will improve.”

Worst was yet to come for me, the courier reached destination on Thursday against the claim of Tuesday. And we had to go and collect it personally, courier guy didn’t deliver it at home also. I have never come across such situation with India Post so far. They have on time service and their tracking system is also better than private players. 

I think that’s the reason people say “old is gold”

Flipkart's apology a small step but major impact

Asking apology from someone for the inconvenience caused is a small step to resolve an issue going out of control but people are reluctant to do it. Some feel seeking apology as an insult to them but they forget the fact that, very few people have the courage to do it. And the ones who do it are very courageous, and people respect them for it.

Recently Flipkart also did a similar thing but in a personalized manner first of its kind at a scale like this. Filpkart launched “Big Billion Day” where by online shoppers were given amazing discounts on products purchased on that particular day. The launch was a hit among shoppers but only for few hours.

Flipkart website crashed twice during the day, things got over and in some situations the payment process was not getting through. There were issues in placing orders as well. Few lucky ones were able to get things at extremely discounted prices but others were left fuming.

Though Flipkart took all necessary precaution to make it a big hit but it failed to impress the visitors on the page. Lot of negative reviews was written about Flipkart in print and online media. But one step by Flipkart silenced all.

Flipkart dropped a personalized email to all visitors of the page who placed difficulty in placing order from its founders. Then they called all those people whose order had to be cancelled due to confusion or other reasons and steps were taken to refund the money to them at the earliest.

Years ago cadbury dairy milk chocolate also faced a similar outrage from masses when fungus was found in their chocolates. They roped in Mr. Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador for cadbury dairy milk and campaign was carried out, where Mr. Amitabh Bachchan took viewers to the factory and showed them about the hygiene factor. And for the betterment of the product, chocolates were wrapped with additional foil other than the outer covering.

But seeking personal apology to everyone who has been hurt by the usage of product has been done only by Flipkart at a very large scale. We can just image about the volume of the email rolled assuming the fact about website being crashed twice due to high traffic volume.

I was also one of the visitors to the website and was very disturbed when my order was not processed but post receipt of the mail and very happy. And I order few things after that.

Unconditional love of parents

Nothing can replace the love of parents towards their kids in this world. Parents are the only people in the world who love their kids without any return. They take pain for their children with smiles which can’t be seen in other relationship. Seems like am also getting it, post attaining parenthood.

I have been travelling all alone since I came to Bangalore for higher studies. Mode of transport depends upon the availability of tickets. I prefer to travel by train but availability of tickets is a big issue. Because plans are made in very short span of time and the only option available then are bus, which has great connectivity.

For this vacation I was lucky to get train tickets to and fro. The moment I board train, worry meter of my parents are on alert. If I don’t call them, they will call me to check whether I have boarded the train or not? Till I reach home keep getting calls from them, about my whereabouts. To avoid some calls, I ask my dad to come and pick me from station.  But while coming back my dad will drop me to station and wait till train/ bus moves.

This time was also no different dad came to see me off at the railway station but just before the arrival of train dad made a statement which touched me, “If anyone offers you tea, coffee or biscuits, just refuse them. You want anything to eat or drink buy it yourself.” Dad knows I have been travelling all alone for quite some time and may be aware about these things but still he wanted to tell me.

This clearly shows his love towards and the fear which he has in his heart when he is sending me off. More than love it was his fear of my well-being that prompted him to say it to me.  I just loved it.

Fear is a form of love but the way dad hid his fear to instill courage and sensibility to face certain situation in me was amazing

A mother’s plight to save her unborn child

Attaining motherhood is the biggest joy in the life of a woman. She can go to any extend when it comes to the safety and security of her unborn child. At times pregnant ladies show extra ordinary courage to ensure the safety of kid in their womb. Yesterday one such story in newspaper touched my heart.

9 months pregnant women had to swim for 90 mins in river to reach another village. This lady comes from a very poor family, both her parents are daily laborers, who could hardly meet both ends after day’s long struggle.  Even the husband of this pregnant lady is not in a condition to take care of her. Hence she was staying with her parents, they stay in a village close to the banks of river krishna.

When this lady entered into her 9^th month, she requested her parents to shift her to hospital but parents ignored due to financial crunch. They assured her that when the time will come, they will take her to hospital. “The water level of river will not rise as monsoon this year may not be good”. But destiny has its own say to this prediction.

It rained heavily and the water level rose beyond expectation, as a result of which boatmen declined to ferry people from one side of the river to another. With every passing hour heartbeat of this lady was increasing and she decided to venture into the river, as staying back was risky. She will need medical support any time. When she asked her father to take her across the river, he told her to jump into the river and sail across, out of frustration. He couldn’t do much because the situation was not in his control.

Finally she decided to swim the river, her father and 2 more of her relative ventured into krishna river. They tied few pumpkins as life guard to ensure she floats in river. In this situation also, she swan half the way, post that she couldn’t swim any further. She had even consumed water also as her body was tired. Then one of her relative lifted her and covered the remaining distance.

After 90 mins they reached another village, villagers saw them coming and came to their help. They shouted at girl’s father for making her swim the river in this critical situation. But her father’s reply silenced them all, “what to do, we don’t have hospital in our village”.

Immediately she was taken to hospital when doctors declared both mother and baby are fine. All throughout her pregnancy she just had ragi roti with chutney. Her circumstances were like that. Now she is in hospital, hope she gets good food there.

I am running out of words to express my feeling towards the courageous task undertaken by this lady. It was highly risky as anything could have gone wrong at any point of time. But the courage and determination of the mother to bring here child to this world, kept her moving.  

Spicejet’s mid air Holi Party, what was it?

Whenever we use mediums of transport like cab, bus, train or flight, knowing or unknowing we give our safety in the hand of the people who will be operating these modes of transport. It is the responsibility of the drivers and pilots to ensure that the passengers are taken their destination with utmost care and concern with adequate safety measures.

Recently a video on youtube left me speechless, I saw that video 30 times but didn’t knew what was attracting me towards? It was the video of Spiecejet flight from Goa to Bangalore on 17^th March’14, where crew members celebrated holi mid air. They performed on the song “balam pichkari”. The most astonishing part of the video was, both pilots were part of the celebration. One of the pilots joined the crew to perform on the song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2VrVivIxI

 

During this time the fight was on auto pilot, the duration of the celebration was 2.40 min but the risk undertaken by the pilots, crew members and the innocent passengers were very high. Anything could have happened during that time. Lucky passengers. Some passengers recorded the entire celebration on their smart phones and uploaded it on youtube. That’s how entire world came to know about it.

Post this incident both pilots have been placed under suspension and a show cause notice has been issued to Spicejet. News channels are airing this incident as hot cake and cashing on it. Have any one of us ever thought why this incident happened? I don’t think so. I feel this was marketing strategy which went horribly wrong.

Reasons to support my thought are as following.

1. Next couple of month’s flight will have low business so in order to attract customer Spicejet would have done it. Couple of airlines has reduced the air fare by 70%. Strategies are being made to retain and attract new customers.
2.  Are pilots and crew members authorized to perform any such celebration without informing their higher up? I don’t think so. If that would have been the case then cabin crew would have behaved with the passengers they feel like and pilots would have taken flights to the destination liked by them than the one assigned to them.
3. Pilots are not suppose to come out of the cockpit during the flight or allow people inside, then what forced /motivated them perform on the flight that too mid air? They had rehearsed for the performance.

Don’t know who did what but feel pity on the pilots who has lost their jobs. I am not justifying the act of pilots because they didn’t discharge their duty to the diligently so they should be punished. But want to know one thing “Did pilots performed out of their free will or they were forced to do it? Depending upon the answer only their punishment can be determined.

 

Selfish people on road

We have across reports in newspaper that accident victims were laying on road for long before help reached them. I used to wonder how people could do such things unless I experienced an incident on road very recently. 

I was travelling to office on bike other day, at a traffic junction a bike passed me. The pillion rider of the bike was wearing a laptop bag and it was open. Seems like in hurry he had forgotten to zip the bag. Couple of people would have seen him and his bag but nobody went and told him the same. Don’t know what stopped then from doing so? There was a lady on her scooty who was about to get struck to one of the pouches of the bag, even that didn’t deter her from informing this guy. She went ahead without any fuss.

When traffic moved a bit and I came close to this guy’s bike, I informed him that he has not zipped his bag. To which he politely thanked me and zipped his bag. I was feeling very happy that I helped someone. But their was one thing which was disturbing me, if I can do it, why can’t other? It was very small gesture. There was no money involved in it that people have to think twice about taking an initiative.

This shows how selfish people have become these days, if the same incident would have happened to them and nobody would have bothered to tell them, then they would have lost couple of valuable items from the bag. Post that they would have cribbed about it saying people are selfish these days but they should ask a question to themselves first, aren’t they selfish? A selfish person has no rights to call other person selfish.

Common man's plight with Hospitals and Doctors

Medical profession is regarded as one of the most respectable and noble one, because of the complexity involved in it. Patients on death bed have been brought to life by doctors in many cases. Rarest and complex surgeries have been performed on patients to save a life and give way for other doctors to follow it. Doctor’s at times are in situation where they have to act fast to save life and have to work under extreme situation. There are cases where doctors weren't successful in saving despite the best effort put by them. We shouldn't blame doctors in such cases.

But now this noble profession is being used as a means to make money and play with the emotions of people. Few greedy people from the medical fraternity are bringing disgrace to other professionals who are honest to their work. That’s the reason why people are reluctant to approach doctors at the initial stage of disease. The first thing that comes to a person’s mind when they hears the word doctor is the number of tests, they have to undergo even for a small fever. The costs of these tests are exorbitant, that’s the reason why people prefer to buy medicine over the counter that visiting a doctor.

Here I would like to share 2 of my personal experience by 2 different doctors.

Situation 1

A day my wife complained of acute stomach pain and she was immediately taken to one of the most reputed hospitals, doctors identified the problem and gave her some medicines but asked her to undergo an array of test. They told me that she needs to be operated of the situation. I didn't give my approval for it and bought some time from them for a second opinion. Since I come from a family of doctors and nurses, I checked with them and they suggested me to go for a second opinion. I said no for the surgery and got her discharged from hospital.

We then consulted an expert in that field and his revelation shocked us. He told its silly matter no need to worry. When we tried to show him the report of various tests undertaken in the hospital, his reply was “I don’t want to see as they are of no use to me”. When we inquired about surgery his was shocked and praised my effort in not getting it done. Surgeries are required in extreme situations and here surgery was out of question.

I was saved from this situation because of my family and google, otherwise my wife would have been operated for no cause and I would have ended up paying huge amount of money to the hospital.  Greed for money

Situation 2

I was pain in my index finger for over a month with no respite from personal medication consulted an orthopedic surgeon from a reputed hospital. He told  I have swelling in the vein of my index finger and he will put me in medicines for some time. If the situation doesn’t come under control then physiotherapy or small surgery may be required. He prescribed mild medicine to me and was kind enough answer all my queries. When I met him after 45 days, he was happy with my recovery and told I just need to take care of my finger and things will be fine for me. 

When I was about to pay for his consultation, he refused to take it. Despite my best effort, he declined my offer to take his fee. Reason he was happy his patient has recovered and followed his instructions without fail. 

I have recommended this doctor to couple of my friends and all have similar experience from. No greed for money

Hospitals make money from test and medicine, hence they ask patient to undergo numerable test. 30% cases test required remaining 70% test act as a source of income for hospitals and doctors. One doctor doesn't acknowledge the test reports, if it has not been taken from their hospital or pathology lab. What difference does it make?

If a doctor is unable to treat a patient, he/she should be honest about it and refer the patient to another hospital rather than risking the life of patient. When doctor’s fail to do their duty, they shouldn't blame patient relative if they turn violent. That is what has happened in Dr. Kunal Saha’s case, where supreme court has award the claimant a compensation of 11crore INR

If doctor’s do their job with full honestly and dedication, they shouldn't fear anything, if not they have tough time ahead.