I ran through Zomato and came across Village restaurant, it had a bunch of 5 star reviews. Seemed pretty awesome and since it meant I would have to drive less I fell for it and we decided to make it our destination. Its on level 5 at Inorbit right next to dialogue in the dark.

The dinner buffet experience is Rs.385 per person. The restaurant is pre-paid , you pay before entering, you are given coupons and a tattoo is affixed onto you like some night clubs (not that I visit a lot of those).

So enter inside, the ambience is village like. There are entertainers who are doing a pretty good job of entertaining a part of the crowd. Everyone is playing dandiya, and seem to be having fun. Great. We get good seats and see what al the place offers to eat. On paper it looks like a lot. However the food taste was disappointing. The chat was just ok, pav bhaji was too spicy. The pakodas werent that good too. The dosa saved the day since its probably hard to get wrong. To give them credit they got the Dhokla pretty bang on. Awesome Dhokla. 

Its all you can eat and by the time we go to get our second helping, our glasses are off the tables. That’s weird. My friend gets more glasses from another table. Next time we get up, we ask the waiter to not remove the glasses.

Suddenly the entertainers start playing the drums like it’s a crazy Punjabi wedding. One of my friends complains of the noise, but I kind of like it. Takes me back to Punjabi weddings we used to goto in Delhi. The beats are exactly the same as they would play as the baraat waits outside. We get up for the main course. There are quite a few things on offer including ‘Aakhri Pasta’. Not authentic village eh. I take a little of Amritsari Dal, Veg Dilruba  curry(or something like it) 1-2 more curries and some papad and fryums and I am set. Wait for the rotis which are piping fresh from the tandoor and I had water in my mouth.

Now the taste, the food was just meh ! Nothing to write home about, but hey maybe its all about the ambience. I finish 2 rotis and am in no mood for more. I look for the sweet dish and see Gulab jamun and jalebi. The Jalebi seems to have gone sour. Yuck. The gulab jamun was ok, but still not that fresh. We did get some decent butterscotch ice-cream when we asked the waiter for Kulfi. So we are all done and chatting when we see the puppet show is happening.

We start watching the puppet show which seems nice, but they abruptly shut it down. I mean just like that. And to add insult to injury, the person with the microphone asks people to applaud the performance. I for one don’t, but many around me do. I call the whole mockery a waste of time and repeat what just happened. They cut off the show in the middle and asked for applause. This apparently irked 1 of my friends who asked me not to discourage them in a public place. Yeah right, 385 rupees for a meh dinner and cut off my entertainment in the middle and I will applaud them. This Punjabi doesn’t take cutting off his entertainment lightly. Maybe that’s the difference, many people were ok at being shortchanged. If you don’t raise a voice people will keep ripping you off.

Maybe that’s their USP, people who don’t care. I cant imagine in the US you cutoff the show in the middle and have the audacity to ask for applause. Anyway I let my displeasure be known and walked out swearing never to visit for the ‘Village’ experience again.

Pros :

1. Variety of food on offer

2. The Dandiya and drums seemed fun especially if you come in a large enough group who love to dance.

Cons :

1. Food doesn’t taste good, the Jalebis had gone sour. I don’t understand all the 5 star reviews on Zomato. Ambience is pretty awesome, people are fun, but the food just doesn’t taste good. They need to fix it.

2. Little respect for patrons (shutting down the puppet show midway)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

I would have loved to comeback with friends had the last incident not happened. I will also write to the management about the same. Maybe some other day I would have given them benefit of doubt.

We usually don’t review food items, but this one was so terrible that the more people I warn the better I would feel. If you like dominos , you would have seen their website promoting the Taco Indiana or whatever they call it.

If you love anything to do with good food, give it a huge skip.

I will describe it, it’s a maida roti with 2 tikkis inside it and looks nothing like what’s on the website. Its filled with some cheese and tastes royally disgusting.

Whoever was the cook who came up with the idea and whoever approved the food item should be fired by Jubilant Foods ASAP.

The stuffing is nothing like what is in the photo. And it tasted nothing like what a TACO should taste like.

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

I have been a Standard Chartered Manhattan Platinum card customer for over an year now, the limit which the bank gave me was Rs.x, x is approximately 1/4 of my monthly in-hand salary. Since I got the card I have been surprised about how they arrived at the limit.

I had 2 other credit cards, one of which I have since surrendered. The limits on those were 2.5x and 10x respectively. Of course I know it’s the bank’s prerogative on assigning me a limit, but sometimes its just so ridiculous that you email the bank and ask for a review. Well the 1st time I emailed them, I was asked to email after six months. And when I emailed them after that , they gave me the same lecture about bank using some process blah blah !

Wow, SC really does something different in calculating the limits. The sadder part is that despite all my efforts, I seem to bump into customer service folks who seem to be inherently stupid, don’t make sense and will write anything to close a ticket. It’s the same copy paste lines, this time I got a reply in record 10 minutes from their second level customer care, this shows no research while responding to customer requests, just respond back with the template you have and close the ticket.

Please note I have impeccable credit history with ZERO defaults ever. Someplace somewhere, Standard Chartered bank’s marketing guys are coming up with awesome products while the customer care department is cutting costs and ensuring that customers don’t stick with the bank.

Why do I still stick with them ?

Well they do have a good product, however the lack of service will I am sure one day force me to severe all ties with them and never return to them ever again.

Can you tell us why their customer service sucks ?

Certainly,

1. I ask them to increase my credit limit via their SR system, no response for days. Then when I email them, I get a mail its not approved. Push them a little more and they say its been raised. Then when I send over my income documents, I don’t hear back for some time, another person now tells me the increase was never approved.

2. I redeemed some rewards which includes bonus Vodafone talk time (don’t take it, it’s a pain to redeem), the vendor doesn’t recharge my phone, I complain to Standard Chartered bank and lo and behold, they ask me to call Vodafone up which is a 4th party to all of this drama. I mean, I cannot even swallow the stupidity of the response.

Ref : xxxx

Dear Mr. Sud,

This is with reference to your e-mail dated July 21, 2012.

As informed earlier, we request you to contact M/s Vodafone directly for further assistance.

We regret any inconvenience caused to you in this regard.

Assuring you of our best services always

Yours sincerely,

Sriram Ps

Officer – Customer Care

And there are more instances, every time I am forced to write to their customer care, I feel like banging my head against the wall.

Advice to Standard Chartered folks : Pull your socks up, there is only so much bullshit a customer would take before leaving your bank.

If you watch TV these days, you couldn’t have missed the new Flipkart television advertisements. In the ads, children play the role of grownups and praise Flipkart’s awesome service. However one ad caught my eye, because my experience was a complete 180 degrees from what the ad portrayed. Here is the sort of brief, a child (posing as an adult), tells about how he bought something over the weekend and was impatient to receive it. He contacted customer care and they expedited his delivery or so and he got it on Monday morning. Woohoooo ! Flipkart understands his impatience.

Wait, am I blacklisted that my impatience was met with canned responses and no such understanding ultimately leading me to cancel my order ?

I had to goto USA and for the same needed some TSA approved locks which aren’t broken by the TSA during luggage inspection.

Naturally I searched online and since Flipkart had it listed, I ordered. The delivery data ‘just met’ my requirements so I emailed them confirming the delivery date and what followed was a series of canned unhelpful replies and broken promises unlike what the ad shows :

My Email 1 :

Hi,
I am leaving the country on the night of 13th June, could you please get me an accurate estimate of shipping date for this item ?

Their Reply 1 :

Greetings from Flipkart!
Order Id : xxxxxx
Product : VIP, TSA 3-Dial Combination Lock, TSA3DCBLBLK, Black, Safety Lock, Safety Lock & Strap
We would like to inform you that your order for the above mentioned lock is in the process of fulfillment.
The order would be delivered to you by June 13, 2012. Once the order is shipped, you would receive a shipping confirmation email with tracking details. However, we regret to inform you that will not be able to expedite the delivery as the order would be delivered by the above mentioned date.
We request your understanding and kind cooperation in this regard.

My Email 2 or 3 :

Would have appreciated if you actually read my email instead of sending
another copy paste reply identical to previous one.
Please read my last email and respond.

Their Reply :

Greetings from Flipkart!
Order Id : xxxxx
Product : VIP, TSA 3-Dial Combination Lock, TSA3DCBLBLK, Black, Safety Lock, Safety Lock & Strap
Please be informed that the above mentioned product is available with us and we are currently in the process of procuring the same. This is expected to be delivered to you by June 13, 2012.

And their next email totally blew me away by telling me that there would be a delay of 5-6 business days :

Dear Customer,
Greetings from Flipkart!
Product : "VIP TSA 3-Dial Combination Lock (Black)"
This is to notify you that the shipment of the above mentioned product may be delayed by an additional 3-5 business days.
We are doing our best to deliver the order as soon as possible and will keep you informed if there are any further updates.

—-

As you can see, they didn’t understand my impatience <actually genuine need> and probably lied about their stock status to me and didn’t eventually deliver my order in time leading me to cancel.

After this email I cancelled the order and vowed never to trust them on stuff I need urgently. Promptly went to Shopper’s Stop and bought another brand’s lock for a lesser price serendipitously.

Why I Posted this now : Because their ad is misleading and actually creates an impression that they care about customer needs while shipping.procuring. the truth is that they will ship ASAP stuff which is with them in stock but their CS is unable to even respond personally to people asking for delivery date confirmations and in my case the CS gave me wrong commitments which they were unable to keep eventually. They just depend on luck to meet customer impatience in my experience.

Since time immemorial Red Bull has been the unchallenged energy drink in India. A few more players came, Cloud 9 etc. , but never was the launch threatening to its position in the market.

A few days ago, Tzinga contacted me and asked me if I would like to sample their new offerings, being a tech junkie who stays awake coding, I happily accepted the invitation and agreed to try out their energy drinks.

The first thing that hits you when you start looking at Tzinga is the pricing, it isn’t the same super expensive pricing as the Red Bull cans, its pretty cheap, priced at Rs.20 it can easily be a replacement to the Soda Pop you would purchase at the theatres.

The drink comes in 3 flavours with lots of natural ingredients and Ginseng.

It comes in three flavours. I liked Tropical Trip and Mango-Stawberry flavour the best, the mojito flavour of Lemon and Mint was only ok for me. But then your taste may vary

Overall, The drink does give you a good buzz and is an excellent replacement for the expensive energy drink. The low price is like ‘Sone pe suhaga’

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Well, same was the case with me. If you are planning to use your out of state vehicle for more than a month in AP, then its necessary to pay road tax. The procedure to pay road tax is pretty simple, don’t be put off by horror stories.

I stay in the Gachibowli-hitech city area. Now I have been to three RTA offices, RTA Attapur, RTA, Kondapur and RTA, Khairatabad also. I found the Khairatabad office to be the most hopeless and useless. There is such a huge crowd there and the officials were very busy that they barely have time to answer any questions/queries.

So here is what I did step by step, if you have a NoC and need to get your number transferred then there would be an extra step after paying Road Tax. Before getting the NoC, do find out the RTA name. A NoC in Hyderabad RTA name doesn’t work in Rangareddy District except by going to Khairatabd RTA , a step which you don’t want to take.

1. Head over to Kondapur RTO in your vehicle, as soon as you enter, look around for someone in khaki uniform and tell him you need to pay road tax.

2. He will take you to a room which has space for 2 officers, the officers in my case were very polite. They created a check report for my vehicle and impounded my DL.

3. This check report is what you need alongwith your vehicle RC copy and invoice, head on over to the Attapur RTO

4. Ask the relevant form for road tax payment from one of the shops below, the RTA does not have any form in stock (maybe it’s a way to scam).

5. Fill up most details in the form, rest details would be filled in my the clerk who would calculate the tax needed to be paid. Ensure the vehicle value he takes is correct and does not include road tax already paid in home state.

6. Get the road tax value cross verified from the administrative officers who will double check using the original invoice.

7. Once 7 is done, you would need to get a draft made for the road tax amount and there is another small fee (230 I think) which you can also pay by cash.

8. Once you get your draft goto the same counter, the person there would issue you the coveted green receipt, take a few copies ,keep the original safe and drive around with a copy for the RTA folks on the road.

Since I paid the road tax, I have been stopped twice , the penalty is much more if you bring your car in and pay road tax much later.

I was dining out with a friend when I commented to him that the waiter seemed to be over-doing the whole ‘I am your server, tell me how is your food act’. It was getting annoying to me and I commented to my friend that he doesn’t need to do it. He reminded me of an incident which would make me skip a particular Subway India restaurant and I understood why some places always make it a point that you feel pleasant after going there.

It was new-year’s eve, we were planning on cooking a good dinner for the night and hang out with friends to ring in the new year. So I had skipped breakfast and hoped to catch a quick bite at the Subway in Jayabheri (Near Kothaguda Area). As usual, I got the robotic greeting from the person there. Waited a few mins for my turn, since it was a Saturday morning they were probably short of staff.

I ordered my favourite breakfast sub (which is bread + meat + eggs) and asked the guy there to add veggies (which are an extra 30 bucks or so, INR). anyway so this guy agrees but later on he says his cashier tells him not to allow it and he flatly refuses to add the veggies or for that matter anything to my sub. Now take notices of the fact that this is my favourite sub and I eat it all the time from this outlet as well as from other outlets. I ask for the manager, he points me to the shabby looking cashier , I say manager or owner, he gives me a number which is always switched off. I give up and ask him to finish whatever he had started making.

Now while all this is happening, I casually tell my friend that I will never visit this outlet again. It happens just like that, 1 bad experience ticks off something in your head and you involuntarily decide never to visit a place again. I decided to rely on the other subway outlet near my home that has no problems accepting my requests and whose workers actually listen to me. The owner of that store also responded well to me when I had complained about a certain issue.

That’s the different that good customer service can make to your business, just keep it in mind and instruct your employees to do the needful

I am going to send across this link to the Subway India folks and see if they can take a hint.

So I recently got a car, and like the deal hunting monster I am I started to look at the best credit card for saving money spent on Petrol, The Standard Chartered Super Value Titanium seemed like an awesome card, but alas they didn’t issue me the card, since I also own the Manhattan credit card from them. That’s another story, Standard Chartered bank has awesome product offerings but a pathetic customer care and customer relations team. Will post on that later. My credit limit is around 1/4 of my take home salary and they refuse to increase it.

So yeah, I came across the Citibank Indian Oil Titanium credit card which promises around 2.5% additional cash back apart from fuel surcharge waiver. I investigated into the card a little bit, my city  (Hyderabad) has a number of Indian Oil petrol pumps. So one lazy Sunday morning I went across from 1 petrol pump to another, all in the hopes of finding an Indian Oil petrol pump that has a Citibank Machine. Alas, checking at 4-5 different petrol pumps in a 6km radius, I could find none ?

So I went to the company Indian Oil petrol pump at Madhapur, surely they must have Citibank machine for swiping the card. But even they didn’t have a Citibank machine, they had 3-4 machines on the table, just no Citibank. Why would a company owned and company operated petrol pump not keep a Citibank machine when they are such big partners ? All seems a bit fishy to me. Is it that its just a trick, get people to take the cards but then limit the places where it can be used for maximum benefit ?

My conclusion is that the Indian Oil Citibank co-branded card is kind of a marketing gimmick unless you live near the minority of petrol pumps that are owned by Indian Oil and use a Citibank machine. Unless that is the case, you are better off dumping this overhyped marketing mumbo jumbo driven credit card.

I discovered a list on their website and as expected, only a few pumps seem to carry the Citibank machine and going that far(for me) would use more petrol than the cash back Citibank would give.

1. We departed 15 minutes before scheduled departure time.

2. We landed about 25 minutes before scheduled arrival time.

Check-in : Smooth, barely took 5 minutes, staff was courteous and offered me good seats when I indicated that I was a frequent flier. There was also another person with a portable checking machine, but he skipped me for some reason

Onboard Service :  Very professional, a little too professional ? A little more warmth will go a long way in making passengers feel more comfortable. Also onboard food is too expensive and not really worth the money.

Fares : Somehow Spicejet always manages to get a 1 to 10 rupee upper hand on Indigo prices. Otherwise Indigo is the most economical option on most sectors

So how does it compare to other low cost airlines, in a nutshell :

Indigo vs Kingfisher Airlines : Kingfisher is overhyped, expensive with a very bad CRM, you can see my previous post for more. Their customer care doesn’t even reply to complaints. On the other hand, when I had complained about Indigo’s seating policy last time I flew with them, I got multiple replies. This time the problem seems to have been rectified. I will confirm after my return flight only though

Indigo vs Spicejet : Not much to separate here except the exceptional on time performance of Indigo Airlines vs Spicejet. Last time I took a Spicejet flight at around the same time as this one, it was delayed by over 2 hours.

A rare honour, for this particular experience, I was so delighted to spend more time with my family, I give Indigo a Rating: 5 out of 5 stars , however I will reserve more comments for my return flight.

Update : Got a reply from them that they were investigating the issue and would reply soon, been 13 days since then. Not holding my breath if you know what I mean, big thumbs down to Kingfisher Airlines and its customer care.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Thank you for your correspondence to us. We sincerely apologize for the delay in our response to you.

We acknowledge your concern regarding the recent experience of your mother with Kingfisher Airlines. We would like to share with you that, on receipt of your email an investigation was initiated on the issue; the time taken for the investigation has regrettably delayed our response. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

We request you to please allow us some more time and we will revert to you soon.

Best Regards,

<name hidden>

Guest Commitment
Kingfisher Airlines 

My mom had to go to Shimla on an emergency and since Kingfisher was the only Airline operating the flight, we booked their service for a price that would be around 5-6 times the cost of a road ticket , ofcourse that is not the point. The ticket was booked through Ezeego1

As you maybe aware Kingfisher operates all its flights through Terminal 3 at Delhi which is outside the city. That day due to bad weather Kingfisher decided to cancel the flight after keeping the people in dark and delaying the flight for a few hours before cancelling it (to their credit they served a subway sandwich in the wait period). They gave the guest choice to take a refund or re-book for another day or they could arrange road transport. Ofcourse my mom didn’t want 5000 rupees worth of road transport to Shimla, so she opted for the refund.

When my 55 year old mother asked for transport back to the city, she was in for a rude shock. The lady at the counter asked for some time after consulting (with god knows who), she told my mother that since we had booked via a travel agent, she wont be providing her with transport back to the city. What an outrageous excuse ? It would be better if they say they don’t give transport, but to deny that over such a frivolous reason was totally unacceptable, how does it matter when they are cancelling the flight, its not like they will be paying commission to the travel agent for the cancelled flight. Anyway, my mom being a non-violent person did not raise a hue and cry. I am sure had she done that , she would have got a cab for the city instantly.

As a result, my 60 year old dad had to make the long trip to terminal 3 and get my mom. Its still fine at this stage except for te stupid reason given by the lady at the counter. What irked me more was that when I complained about the incident via the Kingfisher website where Vijay Mallya assures you he is taking things personally, I didn’t even get a callback from these guys let alone an apology. So truly un-premium service, served with arrogance.

In contrast, Indigo, Spicejet and Jet Airways all made a point to personally apologise and thank me for any bouquets and brickbats I sent their way.

The purpose of this post is just to let people know that Fly Kingfisher may boast of premium service, but our experience was truly third class with them. Will send across this post to them in an email.