Eureka Forbes – Pathetic Service with Aquaguard

Dear Sir / Madam,

My name is Veetrag and I hold an Aquaguard classic with customer id 1008824778. This aquaguard has been giving me regular problem for over 2 months and I have tried every means to get it resolved, but none of your people are able to resolve the issue.

I have repeatedly called your call center, talked to various technicians and still no way it could be fixed.

I have talked at least 10 times to your customer care and I keep getting the reply in 24 hours issue would be resolved, but on no use.

I have further gone ahead and talked to Mr. Skanda (Floor Manager), Mr. Lingaraj (Floor Manager), and Mr. Ravindra (Floor Manager). They also promised to resolve the issue, but no result has come out yet.

Further, I talked to Mr. Achunanda ( Phone number – 9XXXXXXXX6, who I think heads service division) and he promised to get issue resolved in 24 hours. It has been 24 hours since he promised and the issue is still pending.

Then I was given number of Mr. Shivram Krishna (Manager of Mr. Achunanda, Phone number – 9XXXXXXXX9, who sits in Mumbai office). I was unable to contact him even after repeated calls.

In the last 3 months since the problem started your people have come and changed Filter, Mother Board, Sensor and some wirings and still the issue has not been resolved. I don’t understand how complex is mechanism of an aquaguard that your technician (Mr. Prashant) and your senior technician (Mr. Vipul) have not been able to resolve.

Not just that, Mr. Prashant has been rude and up to level where he keeps on hanging up on me. He even told my wife that we people don’t know how to use aquaguard and how can you keep breaking it. To clarify the things, I am an engineer and my wife is a doctor. We are well qualified people, who knows how to use an aquaguard which just has 2 buttons. It is a total problem with your service team, which has not resolved the issue.

Me and my house owner (Mr. Nagaraj) who purchased the AMC and Aquaguard for me have called repeatedly. Please let me know what should be done now. It is time of Summer and water is very critical to human life, if you can’t resolve an issue in over 2 months I think you do not deserve to provide a service like this.

Your service people has tarnished the image that I had in for an organization like Eureka Forbes. If this issue is still not resolved at earliest, I would be forced to go to consumer court to get justice.

Regards,
Veetrag

+91 895 176 6681

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Investment Decisions – Is Insurance efficient?

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Overview of Leadership Simulation Workshop

I get this question regularly, what do you do. Here in this video, Mr. Arul Prakash, VP, Fire Products, Gunnebo India, sums up our team’s work.



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Satyamev Jayate: An Initiative to Involve

{EAV:3c81b3a71b1f8a22}Let me start with a disclaimer, I do not like reality shows, and I consider them to be taking our generation on the wrong path. So, when I heard of Amir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate, my first thought was good idea, but why in form of a reality show. But yesterday when I watched the first episode of Satyamev Jayate, and let me say I was immensely impressed, I realized what a real reality show can be.

I was skeptical about how the show would be, will it have masala, will it try to address real issues or superficial issues or will it be just another way for time pass without feeling guilty about it. Show stars with vision of Amir Khan and that makes things clear on what path this show is going to take.

Show basically has four parts – problem, information, what has been done till now and what should we do. As things started to unfold, it became clear to me that first three parts would be done proper justice and I was curious to see how he will handle fourth part.

This episodes focus was female foeticide. For me information was most fascinating aspect of the program, which was covered in very simple and straightforward way, so that there are no controversies or misinterpretations and every person can comprehend easily. There was no sugarcoating of facts or elevating to an alarming level, so that message does not get lost. For example three direct facts from program were:

  1. It is the male chromosome that is responsible for sex of the child.
  2. It is not the uneducated people from towns and villages that mostly indulge in female foeticide.
  3. This practice started because in 70s government promoted sex identification as one means to control population.

Very simple facts, put in straight forward way and not politicized to indulge in blame game. What has happened has happened, now lets try to solve this problem, seemed to be motto of the show.

Now comes the portion, which I was curious about. How will Amir contribute to solving the problem or is this show just about spreading awareness. His message here was very simple, look around, try to see problem for yourself and try to figure out what you can do. At that time, I was disappointed, but overtime I realized that, this may be the best possible way to handle the problem.

This was about empowering people and he was giving a platform and leading by example of what could be done. This should be the way, because one person cannot handle this problem, he or she can surely influence a set of people and help couple of hundred people, but by this approach he is trying to empower everyone in similar way what Gandhi tried to do by dandi march.

My this hypothesis was strengthened by this tweet from Anand Mahindra.




This show is a simple honest way to handle problem, and we can see this from the way set is designed in a very simple way, its music and kind of guests that are brought here. For those who missed this show, surly watch it. Below is the youtube link.

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RIP Steve Jobs

This morning when I got up the first thing I saw was an image of Apple 2 with RIP Steve Jobs written on screen. It took me time to realize what has happened. It was a shock. A shock because I believed this time also he is going to pull back from setbacks that life keeps on throwing at him.

In 90s I knew who Steve Jobs was, but had no idea how his product looked like or how great were those. Reading tech articles, I had general idea about how good he was. Sometimes in 2004 I saw an iPod and I was surprised by the product and great mind behind this.

What really made me a fanboy was his Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005. I heard this for first time and I was so impressed that I printed the speech and mailed it to my father, with a note saying, “you know father there is this guy called Steve Jobs, he is the founder of Apple Company and read how amazing this guy is”. Those three stories that he talks about were such an inspiration for me. His struggle in beginning and trying to break boundaries, challenge the conventional ways was something spectacular. I was so inspired that first laptop I brought, I got “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, engraved on it.

All this time I knew him as great innovator and visionary. But in 2007 when iPhone was unveiled it struck me how my thinking of him as innovator was an understatement. Ad story does not stop here, apart from all this he was the greatest marketing guy ever. His skills in marketing are not comparable. I never missed a single Apple event after 2007. I watched them not because I wanted to get the news first; I wanted to see him deliver those speeches. It was just a mesmerizing experience.

I should be a good example of his marketing skills. I am a person who does not listen to music, but after seeing his iPhone announcement I could not resist and bought iPod Touch soon afterwards. Using his products over years have taught me what actually experience is, and how to create customer experience. No one does it better than Steve Jobs.

He has such an influence on me that I would often say that one thing that can keep me in US is a job at Apple, for anything else I am returning back to India. I always tried to imitate his business style in exercises/simulation we did. I would always quote his example when arguing and when someone would quote his example, I would say, “he is an outlier, his examples don’t count.”

Rest in peace Steve Jobs, you are an outlier.

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Enough!!!

This is a post I am writing en route to Delhi. I was on Bangalore airport when I saw the new about blast in Delhi High Court. Was I shocked…No. I am neither surprised nor shocked. Why should I be shocked, it’s almost a monthly routine now. Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmadabad, Hyderabad or any big city, which has too many humans and good business, it would have had blast sometime in past 2 years.

I was not shocked, that does not mean I wasn’t sad, I was very sad. More sad on the part that what is happening in the country. Why are we not able to curb this terrorism, which is causing us so much damage? It’s not a new thing for our country to face, we have been facing this for last 20 years at least, so we should be prepared for such things and how to handle them.

What currently happens after a blast is as follows. One team starts investigating, other team overtakes it, our politicians start condemning the attacks, then police (or similar agency) puts in a lot of effort and catches few people, then they are stuck in judicial system awaiting punishment, media finds something new to talk about, people forget, politicians forget and somewhere we have another blast. The cycle goes on.

Why do we do all the actions afterwards? Yes, there is another set of opinion – you don’t know how many attacks our intelligence has saved. I agree with them, that is a fantastic job, but not enough. Not enough considering this has been going on for two decades now. We have too many people in our country does not mean value per life has reduced, its same everywhere in world.

Then there are politicians. Like today Home Minister said –“It was not intelligence failure, we didn’t have intelligence”. Then someone from opposition party said –“no intelligence is intelligence failure only”.  I agree nice play of words, but that does not solve the problem. You can condemn attacks, walk out of parliament or do some other political drama but that does not solve the problem. Even Pakistan condemned the attacks, what does that mean, nothing.

And what is happening with the people we are catching? Why are they not getting proper punishment on time. Why is Kasab still is jail and has not been given what he deserves. We have videos of his shooting during Mumai blasts, what more proof do we want to punish him. It’s been two years and he is still in jail and we are spending money on his. Keeping him in there long will again create situation as we had today. Some organization will attack some place and threaten to do the same if we don’t release him. Some other organization might hijack a plane and get him released. Why not punish the guilty and show others that if you choose same path what will be the final destination.

That brings me to the point, why am I writing this blog post? I don’t know why I am writing this. I wrote a post ‘Impact of Blogging’ after Ahmadabad serial blasts, trying to prove that blogging does not do anything to solve the problem. It is my form of “condemning” the attacks. I am kind of helpless here. I don’t know what to do, what can we do to solve this problem. This is just a way for me to vent out my anger.

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One Week Review of Google Plus

It’s been over a week since I have started using Google+ and till now it has been a brilliant experience.  This is a set of features I really like and could differentiate it from Facebook, it’s biggest competitor, even if Google acknowledges that fact.

Circles – People might really like the idea of Circles because of privacy implications, but for me I like because of totally different reason. I don’t keep a lot of things private, but I always worry about spamming a set of people who are not concerned with the kind of things I am sharing. For example, I have these two best friends who I really want to talk and share a lot of information, but I don’t like to share technology related news/analysis with them as they are not techies. Now, I have a way of spreading the news to set of people I want to share with and neglect others.

Circles also help me categorize the news that is important to me. I created a Circle Geeks2Follow and am using that feed page as Google Reader shared items. Google Reader shared items had a problem that it did not contain the comment thread or could maintain the real time feedback. Now, I see the immediate reaction of people and don’t have to wait till one needs to write a full post. This is same that could be achieved at Friendfeed, but combining both experiences makes it great. It also solves the issue of now having threaded conversation on Twitter.

Huddle & Hangout - I see a lot of advantage of these two features, both of them deal with groups and that’s where most of my conversation takes place. Hangout would be one thing that I would surly like to use on my podcast, this way we could capture audio and video in a very synchronized way. Hangout is also useful in doing some group meetings, because this does not involve installing clients, changing firewall settings and so on. Another feature of hangout that I use most is watching youtube videos with friends. This has given a totally new experience of watching videos and has taken it to social level.

Huddle is useful for communicating while traveling. We do a lot of our business communication via N1 and always had issue of not having group chat functionality on phones. Huddle solves it and also makes it more SMS like, thus solving the issue of not wanting everyone to be online to start the conversation.

Search – One thing that will improve drastically is search results and I have already started seeing the impact of  social graph. This morning I searched for ‘Google Plus Features’ and third search result was from Matt Cutts, and it read – Matt Cutts shared this (image below). Definitely as more users build in, we will see a lot of improved results.

Improved Search Results

Everything else is more or less the same, similar to other social networks like Facebook. I drastically reduced using Facebook because of lack of energy there and most of the people spending time on Zynga. One main feature that I liked about Facebook was it’s event system. It used to work well when I was in grad school. Was very useful in planning events. Google+ needs to add that into their system as well, Calendars is already a good feature just it needs to be integrated with Google+.

Feature Wish List

Mute should permanently mute the post and I don’t need to see any comments that have been put after my comment, I also don’t need a notification mail for that. I am using mute post as a ‘read post’ feature, to clear of my stream. One way to solve is to add another feature called ‘read’.  So, if I have read and commented then I should get notifications and if I commented and muted, then I should not get any notifications.

Android client for Google+ also needs a mute(and read) functionality, as I am consuming most of the content on my N1.

Similar to Picasa integration, we should have YouTube integration too. I have a set of videos on Youtube and none of them got imported to Google+ and I added few videos to Google+ and they are not on youtube. If that functionality can be added, it would be perfect. Of course here an option would be given, if you want to make the video public or not, as youtube does not have same privacy settings.

Overall, it’s been a very experience with Google+. Surely early adopters like it a lot, we will have to wait and see how masses will react to it.

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Review : Post American World

Post American World

Post American World

Since I read the books The World is Flat and Confessionals of An Economic Hitman, I have been suggested by many to read Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. Finally I got a chance to finish it, I took long because I did not like the start of the book. The book starts with “Rise of the Rest” which is a series of facts, which were related but did not make much sense. There was coherency in the facts, but I found lack on analysis. May be because it was an Audiobook and was read by Fareed Zakaria himself and he could not deliver the same depth as many of the artists provide.

Once he moves out of those initial series of facts, he starts connecting the dots between India, China and United States. The way each of the country has grown in past few centuries and what differences makes them behave in certain ways. His analysis of how each of the cultures grew, fell and grouped again is mesmerizing. Many scholars like to show a snapshot of society, but Zakaria was able to give a proper perspective from different areas.

His analysis of Great Britain and US and an effort to draw a parallel between these two superpowers (of different times) is excellent. He has chooses the facts wisely, not getting overwhelmed by different theories and kept the book simple. That’s the beauty of the book, it keeps the flow, and guides the reader in direction of his thinking.

The book ends with his suggestions towards US and how it can cope with rise of the rest. He has a set of suggestions, which he has concluded from the facts provided in the book. It’s a very good book for people who likes to understand modern growth, differences between east and west, and how each culture has risen and fallen because of its strengths and weaknesses which again are relative to time.

If someone is interested in questions like why a country like India who was rich enough to build great wonders like Taj Mahal, but could not rise with west, then this is the book you should be looking at.

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Thoughts on Eve of World Cup Final

Tomorrow we play one of the crucial games of the year (yes, this year, not of four years) when we face Sri Lanka in World Cup Finals. I don’t know why this game does not excite me much. May be because we have played Sri Lanka too much in recent time or may be because I feel so many similarities between Indian and Sri Lankan team. May be because I would have supported Sri Lanka for World Cup if India exited earlier. There can be many reasons, but this game does not enthuse me as an India-Australia or India-Pakistan final.

Most of the let down in energy comes from the fact that both teams are similarly placed – heavily dependent on batting line up, masters of spin pitches, donning heavy spin attack spearheaded by one fast bowler. This makes both teams adopt similar strategy and that does not make me happy. I wanted it to be a battle of bat and ball, but it seems like a contest of bat and bat.

But that’s not the biggest thing going on in my head. Sachin Tendulkar is the key, not because he will play a crucial role in game but because this is his final World Cup. We need to win this cup for him. If we succeed, India’s greatest star will get the gift he deserves.  If it was just up to his performance we would have secured at least four out of five cups he has played in, but cricket is a team sport and there are too many aspects for a victory or failure than just an individual’s brilliance.

Sachin Tendulkar

Then is the idea, that it might be the last time we will watch Sachin Tendulkar bat in a One Day International. And if that is going to be the case then I want time to stop now, I don’t want to see what happens tomorrow, I don’t even want to imagine what happens afterwards. World Cup or not, without Sachin Tendulkar, cricket will never be same again.

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Mail Merge in Gmail With Attachment Support

The post and spreadsheet provided by Amit Agarwal on How to Create a Mail Merge with Gmail and Google Docs is extremely useful.  But for last few days, I have been wanting to send attachments along with the mail merge. I tried many options but was unsuccessful, finally a set of combinations worked for me and I am sharing that spreadsheet so others don’t have to go through the same trouble.

Follow the above provided link for understanding how to use Google Docs for mail merge, after that is working fine, you can use the following spreadsheet. This is the spreadsheet which can be used to add attachments to email. I have an editable column F13 where you will have to provide Document ID. Once you provide the document id, the steps to send emails are exactly same as mentioned by above blog post.

How to get Document ID:

Step 1: Upload the document that you want to attach on Google Docs.

Step 2: While uploading the document make sure that the option ‘Convert documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and drawings to the corresponding Google Docs formats’ is checked. If you do not check this option, your documents will not attach properly.

Step 3: Open the document and go to the URL. You can to use the id value as document id. Example: If URL is

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_7_CbUovM_8YWJhYmQxNjktOTdiNS00ZWMyLTg3MzEtNGE3MWVhMjQyYTc4&hl=en

then the characters in bold are document id. Copy and paste them into the F13 box. When you send the mail, document with id will be attached.

I have added another feature of getting the remaining mail count of the day. That can also be accessed from the menu and count is shown above on the spreadsheet.

Update: I have updated the script to provide multiple attachments. Now columns F13 to F17 can contain different attachment IDs, or can be left blank.

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