End of KPN monopoly?

I have a couple of posts on the KPN monopoly practices and their callous attitude towards customer and their comfort.

Against KPN
KPN monopoly rant

There was a situation where there seems to be no end to this.

Finally, there is some competition in this area now.

ABT Travels
ARC Travels

Both these guys are conglomerates with long time service in handling parcels. They have started their tour operations recently.

A refreshing change to a normal whining travel. Their buses are brand new and all are air conditioned. Secondly their charges are very fair and way cheaper than KPN volvo charges. More importantly they have decent facilities at their depots and depart in time.

Time for KPN to change or perish.

Finally Airtel budges

I have been whining about the lackluster response from Airtel on competitive mobile tariff plans. Finally Airtel has come up with a relatively competitive plan to Vodafone's corporate plan.

Monthly rental : 199Rs
CLIP - waived off

CUG - Local - Unlimited

Local
Airtel - Airtel - 0.20
Airtel - Ohters - 0.40
Airtel - landline - 0.60

STD
Airtel - Airtel - 0.50
Airtel - Ohters - 0.75
Airtel - landline - 1.00

Vodafone has similar tariff at lower rental of 175Rs.

KPN monopoly rant

I really feel mundane to rant about the pathetic transport service run by KPN and their sheer monopoly. I happened to recently travel to Erode in their day service bus (as it was the only last resort left with me). The bus was scheduled to depart at 3:00 pm (as per the ticket) from Bommanahalli boarding point. (Read it in sarcastic tone) To much of my surprise the bus arrived promptly at 5:00 pm. The boarding point office lacks all the basic passenger ammenities which one gets in decent bus-stand.

The bus started around 5:15pm and snailed to Hosur around 6:30pm and then reached Salem around 10:30 pm. The bus did not stop anywhere for dinner. Shortly after departing Salem, the bus got a flat tyre. I had to abandon my plan of reaching Erode and had to alight at Sangakiri at 11:45 pm.

Travel time from Bangalore to Sankagiri: 11hrs 15 mins

How good bus service after paying a premium?

Highlight:

• No restroom facility at Bommanahalli boarding office
• No Dinner stop
• No Restroom stop
• Bus did not had a torch / search light. (I had to lend my mobile light to help the crew rectify the flat tyre)

Is there any other bus service to Erode / Salem apart from KPN that does have decent service?

Aquaguard: Chase for invoice begins

When I see my referring links on my blog stats, many of them are from google with search query "aquagaurd" (notice there is a mis-spell over there). So taking a suo-motto cognizance of the visit trend I have decided to document the horrible experiences a customer goes through after purchasing the noble water purifier (aha, see my frustration).

Disclaimer:
The honest intention of the aquaguard related posts on this blog is to educate the intelligent net-savy customers about the horrible services offered by the aquaguard people. Nothing more and nothing less.

So the first chase begins here.

When you buy a water purifier from the "well-informed" (read it sarcastic) sales rep from Aquaguard, little will be known to you about their invoice process. At the completion of the sale, the happy sales rep will handover a slip stating that you had paid on the delivery of the device. It is not an invoice or a bill stating that you had bought the product. The sales rep will promptly inform you that you will get an invoice within 15 days by mail.

That 15 day deadline will never happen. I have bought the product about 4 months back and still haven't received any invoice.

One more thing that you will not know is that the sales rep from whom you have bought the device, would have done either of one these in the following few weeks

1. Changed his mobile number, so that you cannot reach him
2. Changed his job
3. Changed his department with in aquaguard

In my case, it was option 3. I am chasing them through their customer care and every time they tell me the same crappy story. They ask me my mailing address and receipt number, stating that the invoice will be delivered in 2 days. Again nothing happens.

This is not an one off case. My friend has ended up calling them more than 100 times to get the invoice. Many more are in the process. Some are blissful enough with out caring that they require a legitimate invoice some time later when their device starts mall-functioning.

Will this spell the end of aquaguard monpoly

I had been cribbing about the monopolistic practices by Aquagaurd Water purifiers. It seems that Philips had listened to it. Philips India is entering the water purifier market. I hope two things will make Philips a big hit

1. The price range of their water purifiers are in the same range of Aquagaurd.
2. They sell their product through retail outlets. (So customers win here. They get cheaper maintenance)
3. Battery backup

Against KPN

Gops has posted his horrifying experience with KPN travels and their sheer disgrace towards the customers.

I have already posted about my horrifying experience. There was one more, sometime back which I skipped unintentionally. I had booked tickets to Salem from Bangalore in 11:00 pm Thiruchengode bus. I was particular about this bus, since it reached Salem at the time I wanted to land there.

After reaching KPN office at Bommanahalli and waiting more than the slated time, the staff announced that the bus has arrived mentioning its registration number. When I reached the designated bus, I was told by the cleaner that bus is not heading for Thirchengode. A little later one of staff told me that the original bus has broken down and there is no alternate bus. Since I had booked only till Salem, they will put in some bus which goes via Salem. Imagine this situation in middle of the night with dependents by your side.

After waiting for a while in the pavements, I was given two seats in another VOLVO bus. All my plans got disrupted and managed to reach Salem with this horrifying incident running back on my mind all the time.

Hope Gops would succeed in teaching a lesson to KPN through customer redressal forum.

Aquaguard == monopoly

Another incident of sheer monopoly.

Aquaguard is an undisputed leader in the world of water purifiers in India. They practice unethical marketing strategies to sell their products to the households. They sell their products in door-door marketing fashion. So their marketing agents just tell all possible lies on earth to convince you to buy their product. On the day, when your first annual maintenance contract ends, you have to face the brutal facts about their product.


I bought a Aquaguard Reviva (Reverse Osmosis) based purifier about a year back. At that time I was told that the membrane has to be changed only when it wears out and its average life-time is about 8000-12000 lts of water. I did a simple math and for two persons the potable water consumption per day is about 10 lts and the membrane should last for about 2.5 years.

When the first year was over, the service engineer came and told us that we had to change the membrane and it wont last more than a year. The cost of the membrane is about 2500Rs and with the maintenance expense comes to about Rs3600 per year (which works out to be more expensive than if you buy mineral water from some vendor).

You are left in lurch as you wont get any spares outside in the market and you had to be dependent on their service for the life. Secondly they are free to charge any amount for the service and mostly will not heed to complaints (one could see lot of people complaining about their shoddy service network in the net) .



The height is that I have bought one more purifier from them as I am left with none in the market that could satisfy the requirements. They win and we loose the case always!

SUN TV Network Monopoly

On the news today, once more incident of monopolistic attitude displayed by SUN TV Network. They are not sharing their feed with the rival Tata-Sky DTH.

Earlier incidents
Google blog search results page from SambharMafia