The modern thinking Indian

I wonder how many times people would have noticed things like this. It was just yesterday that I went to 2 different stores - one of them had advertised for a Flat 50% discount (this was a store called Fab Creations in the Cross River Mall in East Delhi), and the other store was the Reebok store in the same mall. The Reebok store had a similar offer, with the different being that the offer was described as 'Upto 50% off'.
First, we went to the clothes stores, there was no problem whatsoever, the clothes were indeed available at 50% off as a flat rate of discount, and the store was full of people willing to buy (and the people purchasing were not cribbing about the rate having been inflated earlier, a tactic that stores such as Cantabil, Priknit, and Kouton seem to have adopted (I wrote about this earlier - Priknit had jackets at 80% off, but the jacket that would normally have cost Rs. 1500 was priced at Rs. 5000 plus and I walked out in disgust at the horrible anti-consumer attitude of the store owners)). People were satisfied at the purchases, with the price and quality seeming right.
Next to the Reebok sale, the sale being advertised at upto 50% off. Last year, I had bought at a similar sale, but was apprehensive about the 'About' in the sale part this year. And to my disgust, this was exactly the case. The sale was only on the T-shirts (and the sign outside did not specify this; Reebok makes shows primarily, and the sale was not on shoes). Now, as a result, I am less likely to walk into a Reebok store when I see a sign about a sale, since I am slotting it into the same category as Woodlands (Woodlands has been in my constant no-go store list, since while I find the shoes fine, their thought process seems to be to hoodwink consumers - their sales are typically on almost discarded ranges of shoes, and the attitude they show when I ask about sale shoes is positively bad).
Is this normal behavior ? Is this right for a store to increase the expectations of consumers like this, and then let down so badly. Does it not seem that consumers will be less trusting of such brands later ?

Labels: Consumer, Discount, India, Retailer, Store, Trust

Medical negligence is something that is penalized the world over. When a patient goes in for a medical procedure, the person is entrusting their lives to the doctor (s) attending on them. It used to be said earlier that a Doctor is a very respected person, and that it would be unfair to penalize a doctor for some problem that occurs during a medical procedure; this is now countered by the argument that modern hospitals and the medical industry charges market rates for their procedures, and hence are not doing any favors to patients. Further, how do you compensate a patient for a case when the hospital has goofed up or indulged in medical malpractise ? Consider this case where a bright IT person was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after a medical procedure (link to article):

In the highest compensation ordered by an Indian court in a medical negligence case, a techie who found himself paralyzed waist down after a surgeon damaged his spinal chord during an operation to remove a tumour in the chest, was awarded Rs 1 crore in damages by the Supreme Court on Thursday. The victim, Prashant S Dhananka, 39, who spiritedly argued his case from a wheelchair he has been confined to since the operation 19 years ago, had sought a compensation of Rs 7 crore.
Dhananka, a senior manager with Infosys earning Rs 1.5 lakh a month and residing in Bangalore, gave vivid details of the gross negligence he suffered at Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), Hyderabad, and demonstrated the inadequacy of the compensation awarded by the high court. NIMS, a semi-government set up, is rated as one of the premier hospitals in the country. While increasing the compensation to Rs 1 crore, the bench comprising Justices B N Agrawal, H S Bedi and G S Singhvi showed both its disgust at blatant attempts by NIMS to wriggle out of its responsibility for the victim's condition and acknowledged the need to provide for the huge medical expenses that Dhananka has had to incur every month since 1990.

It was only some years ago that the Supreme Court had almost refused to penalize the medical fraternity for mistakes made; even now the Court expresses worry at the increasing tendency of bringing medical cases into the legal system, yet there is a necessity to do this, as the Court itself acknowledges - when the institution makes blatant mistakes and then tries to cover up, there is no other option than to order the required punishment.

Labels: Compensation, Consumer, Court, Judgment, Legal, Medical, Punishment, Supreme Court

You must have seen this all the time. You go to a fuel pump, and they ask you whether you want the premium fuel (whether it is petrol or diesel); in some cases, they will tell you that the premium fuel is better for your engine, as well as for the mileage of your vehicle. The fuel will have the name of 'Premium', 'Turbo', or 'Speed', all designed to make sure that you feel that you are taking a fuel much better than the traditional fuel. The television advertisements are all designed to project the same thing, with the fuel supposed to have additives that smoothen the engine, and deliver many other benefits.
Months back, when fuel prices were very high, the oil companies were actually forcing higher consumption of these branded fuel through greater marketing campaigns, as well as through actual constriction of supply of the non-branded fuel at the fuel pumps. So, what is the reality of these branded fuels ? Do their consistent campaigns have any real substance to them ? Does your vehicle benefit if you use such fuels ? Well, the MRTPC did a study, and found that there was no evidence to backup these claims (link to article):

Next time you pay Rs 2 extra per litre to tank up on branded petrol, you are probably being taken for a ride. For, the state-run oil marketing companies have failed to back up their claim of this fuel giving higher mileage and better engine performance before the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC). MRTPC had asked the companies to "clarify the quantitive difference between normal fuel and branded fuel alongwith supportive documents.''
The query, however, failed to get the companies to furnish anything more than letters from additive suppliers in support their claim. While the additive suppliers, the Singapore branch of Chevron and Oronite, have spoken about the benefits of branded fuel, it has failed to impress the Commission as it doesn't regard the suppliers as non-partial authority; on the contrary they are viewed as vested interests. The suppliers' certificates do not talk about any test having been carried out on branded petrol
.

So, the net result is that oil companies claim that these additives are being used the world over, and are from companies that provide these to fuels all over the world. However, in the absence of any proof, paying extra for these fuels is a risk that a person is taking; there is a good chance that you do not any benefit commensurate with the additional price.

Labels: Benefits, Consumer, False, Fraud, India, MRTPC, Oil Companies

Nowadays, there are a number of shops (primarily in the area of apparel and clothing) that seek to attract customers through offering huge discounts. So you have brands such as Priknit offering 80% sale on their jackets, Cantabil offering 80% discount on all clothes, Pepe Jeans branding a sale logo of Buy 2, get 2 free, Kouton's offering 50% + 50% and so on. I have been shopping in many of these, and realize that there is a huge amount of anti-consumer intent behind many of these. A lot of the numbers are inflated, and actual good quality is scarce. So let's take some specific examples, and see what goes on:

- Pepe Jeans: The store had this huge sales sign outside proclaiming that if you buy 2, then you get 2 free (and of course they had the '*', means that some conditions will apply). However, if you thought that this was a great bargain for getting 2 Pepe jeans, then think again. The offer was only for Pepe T-shirts, something that they forgot to put in the huge sign.

- Priknit: I was looking for some discounted jackets for the next season, and Priknit with it's 80% offer seemed fishy, but why not give it a try. So off I went to the Shipra Mall in Indirapuram in the NCR region, and entered the store over there. I looked at a jacket when inside, and speculated that such a jacket should not cost more than Rs. 2,000 at the most, and it looked impressive, and with 80% discount, could be considered for buying. Imagine the shock when the list price of the jacket was listed at Rs. 4,000, and on a closer look, some of the threads on the jacket seemed to be awry. And there were some better jackets that were listed at Rs. 6,000 - you could have knocked me down with a feather.

- Cantabil was the next one - Here also there was a 80% discount. Well, guess what, more of the same. Shirts (and nothing spectacular) were listed at Rs. 1600. I am pretty sure that people would not have even looked at the store again if these shirts were retailed at their full list price; I made a quick exit from the store. If I wanted to buy such shirts, would rather go to a much better place.

- Kouton was the first such brand that was offering these 75% kind of discounts on clothes, and I remember buying some pretty great looking shirts from at discounted prices of Rs. 400, and those shirts looked great, but when I had gone there recently, the quality and designs had degraded.

Final realization: What looks like a bargain may not be a bargain (there is this psychological thing where you end up buying something if it seems to be a great bargain, and you have to spend some effort in order to prevent yourself from falling under this spell), and a lot of these retailers are indulging in some pretty ugly anti-consumer practices. Please add more such issues you know about in comments.

Labels: Apparel, Clothes, Consumer, Customer, Discount, Extra Charge, Fraud, Retailer, Shop, Shopping