21. December 2009 by amal.

Friends

Recently I won case against reputed furniture store M/S Ahaa (www.Ahaa.in) @ Bangalore. I purchased cot & 2 side-tables for 42K, August last year. To my dismay, wood started peeling a month after, I could see powder droppings, wood cracks etc. They did replacement after lot of effort December last year. Again with the new set, same issues resurfaced around Jan ‘09.

When I approached them, they just washed off their hands and told nothing is possible from their side. I approached consumer forum (after lot of written communication) and filed case. It took around 3-4 months to get resolution in my favour.

Finally Ahaa people taken back furniture and refunded the entire amount.  Two of my IIMB alumni friends Arvind Sinha & Sharada consistently supported me. Special thanks to them for motivating me to pursue the case and overcoming fear of uncertainty. I will suggest approaching consumer forum for any similar issue. Though, it is tedious process but worth getting piece of mind.

Process:

- Written communication with opposite party (Ahaa in my case) with sufficient proof

• Mode: Registered post, Fax, Lawyer notice

- Approach consumer forum with written application mentioning following details:

• Opposite party details (address & contact details)
• Your contact details (address & contact details)
• Financial claims (clear numbers, if possible break-up). For example actual amount paid, refund required, mental harassment etc.
• Case details with sequence of action corroborating your claims

- File @ the case at consumer forum (Karnataka forum - http://kscdrc.kar.nic.in/). Application to be submitted in original with 3 Photostat copies

- Hearing details & sequence of action

• 1st date: Your case & claim justification
• Case details send to opposite party by consumer forum
• Opposite party filing there version (response), You will receive copy of the same
• You file your version (response), addressing points raised by opposite party. File your affidavit (Affidavit filing is very important)
• Opposite party defending there version
• You defending your version
• Arguments
• One more argument session (I am not very sure, but in my case this happened)
• Dooms day

Few suggestions

- Affidavit is important

Lawyer is optional. If you are sure about the process, no need to hire lawyer. During first hearing, I realized most of the cases are defended by Lawyer.  I decided to hire lawyer as well. In my opinion, if somebody would have briefed on the entire process, I myself would have defended the case.

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28. September 2009 by amal.

The story of the eagle - This is incredible!

The eagle has the longest life-span of its’ species. It can live up to 70 years. But to reach this age, the eagle must make a hard decision in its’ 40’s. Its’ long and flexible talons can no longer grab prey which serves as food. Its’ long and sharp beak becomes bent. It’s old-aged and heavy wings, due to their thick feathers, become stuck to its’ chest and make it difficult to fly. Then, the eagle is left with only two options: die or go through a painful process of change which lasts 150 days.

The process requires that the eagle fly to a mountain top and sit on its’ nest. There the eagle knocks its’ beak against a rock until it plucks it out.  After plucking it out, the eagle will wait for a new beak to grow back and then it will pluck out its’ talons. When its’ new talons grow back, the eagle starts plucking its’ old-aged feathers.

And after five months, the eagle takes its famous flight of rebirth and lives for 30 more years.

Learn from the Eagle.

Spread Your Wings and Fly. I thought this was interesting. Did you?

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31. May 2009 by amal.

All of us are e-intruded by spams email everyday in various manner. It could be in the form of simple forward bringing luck, prosperity or lack of it the email is not forwarded.  Most of the time propensity to forward increases by the emotional subject such as “missing child since Tsunami attack”, “raising charity by forward”, e-petition on various affairs such as election, green environment etc.  Statistics reveal spam propagation spread across all the levels of internet/e-mail users be it industry (IT/non-IT), demographic (developed economics- US, UK, Israel, Australia etc, developing economics - BRIC and under-developed nations), age-segments (Teen, middle-aged, senior etc).

In terms of pure numbers, there are various counts:

• Spam accounts for 14.5 billion messages globally per day. In other words, spam makes up 45% of all emails
• Average spam: 41.9 msgs/second; max spam: 75.9 msgs/second; Total spam: 3620999 (On the day of May 31st, 2009) (Source: http://www.spamcop.net/spamgraph.shtml?spamstate)
• According to a study by the Radicati Research Group Inc., a research firm based in Palo Alto, California, spam costs businesses $20.5 billion annually in decreased productivity as well as in technical expenses (source: http://www.spamlaws.com/spam-stats.html)

There are multiple mechanism to prevent spams, notably are:

• Spam filters provided by the email service providers
• Social  awareness (internet, corporate focus, consortium recommendation)
• Individual diligence not to forward any mail

Among all of the above mentioned prevention mechanisms, most effective one is individual diligence. It seems mostly spammers rely on the human sensitivity of emotional topics, social/moral responsibility. Individual many times rely on momentary judgment rather than email-authentication of spam vs. non-spam. To break the bandwagon effect, individuals tendency to get swayed needs to be broken.  Individuals can rely on www.snopes.com for the authenticity of any email spam vs. no-spam. Snopes.com have done credible job of maintaining spam emails of various categories and they keep vigil to add more to there list. Reader digest has recently published article on snopes.com as well.

I suggest netizens to rely on individual judgement not to spam and when in doubt rely on snopes.com. Let’s contribute 2 cents towards e-responsibility

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