My experiences with ecommerce

This may be my very own unique set of experiences, but I am sure many of you will have your own stories to tell as well… With the rise of these e-commerce websites and their non-stop advertisements, I thought of giving them a try.  

Over the years, I have purchased many things off these sites, from transistor radios to undies. The common thread running through these purchases, with a few exceptions, has been one of surprises and compromised quality. Now read my litany of woes…

Wooden stand lamp : What can go wrong with this ? The lamp came with three pieces of wood that could be fitted together, a lamp shade, a lamp holder, an LED bulb and wiring. I assembled it and set up in my bedroom. Very nice !!

On day three, the bulb died in a minor explosion !! A first in my life. I replaced the bulb. Three months later there was a burning smell in the room, and the lamp went out. The wire had short-circuited !! I replaced the entire wiring – not taking any more chances.

Transistor radio :  I purchased a nice transistor radio with a retro look. Worked flawlessly for six months. Then the rechargeable battery died. It was a pretty unique battery that took me a while to replace – again off the Net. That lasted for about four months. Now I run it as a radio set plugged into a power socket. The band selector switch requires a few slaps and tweaking every morning before any sound comes out of it, and the volume control has a mind of its own.

CD/DVD player : Purchased a fairly cheap CD/DVD player from one of the web-sites. Ran perfectly well till the monsoons. One thunderclap near our place one rainy afternoon, and the player got so scared that it refused to recognize any CD/DVD after that. Could not lodge any warranty claim – that is a different story.

Purchased a replacement player after a few months – the earlier model was not available anymore. The warranty card asked me to register the purchase on the manufacturer’s website. The list of products that they have on that website, does not include the device I have bought !!  Now I am on my own, hoping this product will last. It is working, though, with the odd hiccup now and then.

This episode reminds me of a conversation I once had with a roadside Chinese vendor somewhere in southeast Asia. I had asked about the warranty of the product I was buying. He had said, “No warranty lah !! You want I give. You buy, I forget.”

Paper shredder :  Purchased a paper shredder encased in a beautiful blue plastic box. I could shred only three sheets of A4 paper, before one of the rotating blades bent and went out of alignment !! Now it is a beautiful piece of junk.

Cargo shorts : I had purchased a pair of cargo shorts abroad that lasted me for about seven years. Thought I would buy a second pair. Purchased it off the Net once again, since the retail shops did not have it. The material was very thin, and I had to get a tailoring job done to replace all the zip fasteners and parts of the stitching. Thereafter it was usable.

Ordered a “repeat purchase”. This one came in a different colour and material. But it was of a better quality than the previous one. They changed the meaning of a repeat purchase.

Undies : The less said the better !! Some purchases were outright scams. Some purchases were of poor quality – possibly factory QA rejects, some were of the wrong size.  One piece was bright, post-office red !! Who wears post-office red undies ??

Books : There is a particular book that I love reading time and again, but it has been out of print for many years. Wanted to present it to someone and went on a search. The website said they had two copies. I ordered one. Received a completely different book by another author, but with the same title !!

Multi-meter : I needed a multi-meter for many reasons. I had used one of SANWA make, many years ago and was thrilled to find it on the Net. Ordered one. What came to me is a fake / replica product “SUMWA”… But thank God, it works.

Lens cap for Nikon DSLR camera : I lost the lens cap of my camera a few months ago while trying to ride a horse and take pictures at the same time. Purchased a replacement off the Net. Got a CANON lens cap, although I had specifically ordered NIKON. It fits, though.

Do those websites take responsibility ? No. They conveniently pass it on to the source companies. And the worst part is that, for weeks together, they will flood you with advertisements about the product you have recently purchased !!

Now tell me, can we ever compete in the world with this kind of business ethics ? In my opinion, never !!

This English language !!

 This story is from the mid-nineties, when I was on assignment in Hanoi, Vietnam, and my family had joined me after a few months.

 Our infant son was rapidly growing out of his clothes, and we had decided to buy some new stuff for him. Back in those days there were very few shops that specialised in baby clothes, and even fewer shopkeepers who could understand English. I consulted my office colleagues, and they directed me to a couple of shops near the Hoan Kiem Lake area.

We entered the first shop – their shelves did have a very wide variety of baby clothes. After a bit of searching and trials with my fidgety baby, we settled on a set of clothes that we thought, would last him at least a few months. (A couple of sizes bigger, if you know what I mean…)

 My wife, while checking the fabric, asked the lady shopkeeper, “Is the colour fast ?”

Her instant response was, “Yes, Ma’am, very fast”…. Then her face clouded as she wrestled with the dual target of closing the sale, and satisfying her customer… Then remarked, “No, no, I mean colour is slow… very slow,” and brushed her hand over the clothes slowly, to emphasise the point.  

 We pondered over her statement for a while, then bought the stuff. She packed the clothes in a big plastic bag and assured us once again, “Colour very slow, Ma’am, no worry.”

 Well, she was indeed truthful – the colours never faded in the few months my son wore those clothes, and indeed remained the same long after.

 The colours were slow indeed… I mean, fast. I think they should do something about this English language.

These changes...

 The parting day lends its farewell glow

To everything that is down below;

Were there joys and sorrows in every task ?

Time to reflect, time to ask.

 

Forever, down the stream of time

The sun has ruled, with its rays sublime;

Our lives, our songs, our daily chores

Harvests and festivals, our social mores.

 

Now electric lights have changed the game

Days and nights can be the same;

We have longer hours for work and play –

Totally delinked from night and day.

 

The birds in the trees, they no longer sleep

When the sun, in the west, goes down deep.

Sunflowers in the evening – bright and gay,

And bats fly freely during the day !!

 

Too many changes of fundamental ways,

‘Tis worrisome if each one stays;

We need to re-boot, re-align –

‘Cause Nature’s ways are always divine !!

A business trip – Chicken Lava sandwich and EWEW airport

 Had to travel to Hyderabad the other day… Was shocked at the airport itself, trying to enter. At the entrance they asked if I had the Digi Yatra app and I said no, and they looked with pity at an old man. Then asked me to queue up “there”… “There” was a melee, many folks, all confused, waiting for something. I too, joined them. A young man asked me to step on a pair of shoes painted on the floor, and then viola !! They took a mugshot. Gave me a small slip with a QR code. Asked me to go to a hi-tech gate with Perspex leaves. Another young fellow snatched the slip with the QR code, put it on the reader, and wow !! Another mugshot !! The leaves opened and I was allowed to enter the hallowed terminal.  (I just wonder what could happen, if I had decided to go home after those two mugshots… A red alert across the city ?? I wonder…)

 The rest of the experience was routine – just like in the past. There is this budget airline that always lectures us poor souls on the virtues of being on time but is almost always late by more than fifteen to thirty minutes. This time they had messaged that the flight would be leaving ten minutes early for “operational reasons”, but took off about twenty minutes behind schedule – again for “operational reasons”, I suppose.

Things were OK, till we were in mid-air, when they served me the pre-ordered food. It was supposed to be chicken paprika sandwich. Two bites, and I had molten lava going down my system. They did not serve coffee or tea because of some turbulence; had given me water only, which is not affected by turbulence.

I studied the package. The sandwich contained chicken along with all the reputed spices from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, mixed of course with a host of numbered chemicals. The poor chicken which had given up its life to grace my sandwich never got a chance to make its presence felt amidst that battalion of spices. The coffee came quite a while later, when the pilot decided that we had had enough of turbulence. By that time the chicken molten lava sandwich was almost finished, and I had water running down my eyes and nose… Possibly ears, too – did not check.

In all my decades of air travel, airline food has always been bland, with some sauces added to get a feel of taste. This was a commando operation by a budget airline.

Rajiv Gandhi international Airport at Hyderabad airport is now all snazzy and beautifully done, but designed to make all people passing through it, healthy. Very healthy indeed, by forcing them to walk through its carefully designed halls. We all walked for more than 15 minutes to reach the luggage carousel, hoping that the luggage would have arrived by then, but no !! We had to wait for another thirty minutes or so for that. I have decided to rename RGIA as the EWEW airport (Endless Walk, Endless Wait).

The return leg was not so bad. The security personnel at EWEW airport were much more professional and elegantly graceful in handling an old fellow without the Digi Yatra app.

How slow can you go

 This story is from the mid-eighties, when I was into my second job, handling a spot of sales for a light engineering company in Kolkata. Those were the heydays of militant trade unions, lockouts, different flavours of “strikes” – tool down strike, go-slow strike, gate protests, long processions blocking roads and traffic… the list was endless. I always felt then that the issues were far less than the number of strikes and protests. Few decades on, I still have that feeling.

Coming back to the story I wish to narrate – one day, I was asked by my Sales Manager to go and pick up a Tender Paper from a Government Undertaking and pay Rs.100/- for the same. (It was a princely sum those days, in case you don’t know…). That office was about fifteen minutes by taxi from mine.

I went off happily to do his bidding. It took me about an hour to reach there because some people happened to be lying on the main road protesting about something, till the police came along and created a pathway for the vehicles to proceed.

The office was a staid, old British era building with ornate, hand crafted wooden staircase and ugly tubelights fixed beside those old mini-chandelier type light fixtures, the odd cobweb here and there, and you get the hang of it, right ?

A few more inquiries from the half-asleep doorman and a tea vendor who would only speak to me after I bought a cup from him, and I was at the window where the tender paper was being sold. Told the clerk at the counter about my mission and he directed me to another window at the other end of the hallway to make the payment and collect the receipt, provided I had the one-rupee revenue stamp with me. (Back then, we all kept these revenue stamps in our wallets.)

That exercise cost me almost half an hour because of the long queue – people were making payments for so many reasons.

Came back to the first window, the fellow greeted me with a smile and invited me into the room.  Then asked me the name of my company. I told him. He pulled out a huge register laid in on the table, asked me again the same question. Then started searching for the letter “O”.

“A…B… C…” it went on till the end of the register was reached, which was “M”. There were alphabet markers, and he could have easily found that at the first go, but no – he had to go through some pages of each alphabet before he concluded !!! Gave a sheepish smile and said he would have to get the next volume. A good ten minutes passed before he emerged from the depths of his office with another equally large register. Laid it on the first one and started searching for “O”. We finally found the elusive character – much to my relief.

He then took my receipt and started entering the details in the register – wonder of wonders, it was not a normal entry – this fellow was definitely into calligraphy or something !! Back then we all used to get handwritten degrees and diplomas from the universities, and names were beautifully written in special styles… This fellow’s writing was far better than that. He kept writing the company name, address, payment date, amount in that beautiful calligraphic style, in the register. Got exhausted, call for the tea vendor, offered me some more tea, then asked me to pay for both !!

After tea, he went back into those dark corridors, to fetch the hallowed Tender Paper. Returned with a smile and said he needs to make another set of entries. Again, the same exercise followed – he entered the Tender Paper details in the register, and my company name on the Tender Paper, all in that same calligraphic style.

By the time I emerged from that office, a good two hours had passed. It was a lesson in patience and calligraphy.

An experience of a lifetime !!

Waiting for rain...

 

An ageless assembly of sentient beings

Waiting in silent thrall,

Of the storm that should have come that day;

A rain-and thunder squall…

As usual, the weather proved them wrong,

The storm, it went away –

Light rain and winds, they let us know

That it would come, but another day.

Business of God

‘Tis the season of worship they say –

We’re losing the fervour by the day !!

 

Allocation for the deity is ten per cent or less;

Food, decor and alcohol complete the mess.

 

Visiting pandals far and near;

The priest chants something that none can hear.

 

The people – do they come to pray ?

Watch them closely and have your say.

 

Spirituality and religion live far apart –

One is in hiding, the other in the cart.

 

Blaring speakers and soulless tunes;

Wave after wave, like desert dunes.

 

With smoke and sound – crackers galore –

Where is the Diwali we used to adore ?

 

The courts and police they all have failed –

But will find an alibi when the ship has sailed !

 

Public peace put on the line -

The Business of God is working fine !!

 

DK - 28/Oct/2019