When I changed jobs a few months ago, tried to get my address changed on my bank account and other financial transactions. Was I in for a nightmare...
Imagine the following sequence of events...
I need residence proof to change my bank account address... Simple so far? No.
They don't accept house leases. So, I go to a gas agency and ask for a connection, where they accept a house lease as proof.
Now I go to HDFC Bank to get it changed. The address has changed; hurrah. Now to ICICI Bank. Changed. Very nice.
Now to Deutsche Bank. They accept a latest statement from another bank or a landline phone bill etc.
So I wait for a month, get new statements and then... change that.
Now for my demat account. I t's with HDFC Bank, so I'm off again (forgot the first time). Guess what? They don't accept a HDFC Bank Satement as residence proof. Do you get this the ridiculousness of the situation. HDFC Bank Demat account doesn't accept HDFC Bank account statements as residence proof.?!?!?
Is this over yet? oh no! not at all! Apparently my trading account with HDFC Securities requires me to make another trip to HDFC to get this done...
am I done yet? almost... There is the phone, credit cards (from two banks), insurance.
Fortunately, they accept address changes over the phone. Phew! Imagine the number of trees we are cutting down in the name of address proof...
Why isn't my word good enough? After all! It's my money!
Why am I ranting about this? well! my land lord wants to increase the rent by 90% (urk!) Where is Gurgaon headed to! Anyway, come January, I will be house hunting again...
and yes, I'll need to get my address changed again...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
Doesn't the Vodafone agency get the web?
Apart from the severe criticism the Vodafone agency is getting for the campaign that they are currently running to announce the change.Here is another goof up on their part...
If you try to get on to the web to pay your Vodafone phone bill online, it takes ages for the page to load up... I tried several times , before I gave up on the process. I called up Customer Care and cribbed about it. Nothing came of it.
The due date arrived. So, I tried once more; this time from work. and after a really long wait (I wish I had timed it) the page finally opened.
Keep in mind that it took long enough for me to call up customer care crib once more AND try to pay the bill through the phone (unsuccessfully, I might add) .
So the page opened, I should be happy rite.? I'm being done a favour after all, by the Hutch (oops... Vodafone) gods.
Well the geek in me decided to investigate further. It turns out the login page weighs in at about 1.4 megabytes. Duh! someone there in the web division needs to get his head checked for loose nuts and bolts.
And why am I ranting against the agency? well they created a beautiful background page, and forgot that that image is to be used online.
That background image weighs in at 984 kilobytes... completely insane.
Vodafone should compensate people who tried to pay online, for consuming bandwidth and time.
When will mainline Indian agencies get the web?
Monday, August 27, 2007
Amazon is by far the best online shopping experience.
Amazon is by far the best online shopping experience. I (and many hundreds of thousands) already knew that...
I've been shopping on Amazon for the past 5 odd years... and have held, that is the best shopping experience anywhere on the web.
With ebay now imitating the Amazon experience, just proves what I and many many others also believe to be true.
ZDNet story here
Amazon is beyond just the shopping experience, I see Amazon to be one of the most innovative online entities. The amount of innovation that occurs there, is quite frankly, amazing...
I've been shopping on Amazon for the past 5 odd years... and have held, that is the best shopping experience anywhere on the web.
With ebay now imitating the Amazon experience, just proves what I and many many others also believe to be true.
ZDNet story here
Amazon is beyond just the shopping experience, I see Amazon to be one of the most innovative online entities. The amount of innovation that occurs there, is quite frankly, amazing...
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Will Social Networks talk to each other?
There are voices clamoring for the opening up of the Facebook network. So will it happen?
Sure!
It happened with Email than a decade ago (Yes, there was a time, when email couldn't be sent if the recipient was with a different provider). IM started a couple of years ago. (ICQ+AOL, MSN+Yahoo). We are also now talking about an open document format. So, yes. there is a demand for a unified standard for interoperability.
The next may well be social networks. Facebook as the dominant leader (I know orkut is larger, but in the hipper circles of India (and I suspect in other countries as well) Facebook is de rigueur) will be the last of the lot to jump onto the open standards bit. But it will happen as the market matures.
Whether Facebook will survive as a independent company is another matter. Like Jeff Bezo's said, "I guarantee that five years from now, no one will want to be a social-networking company". This was last year, that leaves four years to go...
Sure!
It happened with Email than a decade ago (Yes, there was a time, when email couldn't be sent if the recipient was with a different provider). IM started a couple of years ago. (ICQ+AOL, MSN+Yahoo). We are also now talking about an open document format. So, yes. there is a demand for a unified standard for interoperability.
The next may well be social networks. Facebook as the dominant leader (I know orkut is larger, but in the hipper circles of India (and I suspect in other countries as well) Facebook is de rigueur) will be the last of the lot to jump onto the open standards bit. But it will happen as the market matures.
Whether Facebook will survive as a independent company is another matter. Like Jeff Bezo's said, "I guarantee that five years from now, no one will want to be a social-networking company". This was last year, that leaves four years to go...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Qresolve
I've joined Quatrro as Marketing Manager and the Product Manager for Qresolve. Qresolve is a Technical Support Service, which is centered in India, but targets customers in the US. It is a one of a kind service for an organisation, which is a full fledged BPO (KPO?) otherwise.
Will keep you posted as to what happens in this unique experiment.
Will keep you posted as to what happens in this unique experiment.
New Indiatimes Mail
This is the 500th Post on my Blog which is now more than 7 years old.
It pleases me no end that it is about the New Indiatimes Mail which was one of the bigger projects I did with The Times Group.
The new mail platform is based on the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Feature for feature, it beats the pants of the largest mail solutions in the world currently. When we were shortlisting the possible solutions for the new platform, we went through a nightmarish scenario of deciding between the India of today and India of tomorrow. We bet on the fact that Broadband in India will happen, sooner rather than later, and that the Indian Internet user will demand a better experience than the plain vanilla offerings that were available to us at that time.
We could have chosen to go with the India of today, and lived with a light mail solution, but on the whole I feel we made the right choice to go with this rich solution along with a lite version for slower connections.
Indiatimes will be the largest installation for Zimbra so far. So this is a very big deal for Zimbra as well. Though they have a very very large ISP in the US, who will also be using this platform in the near future, with some upgrades to the user interface.
This change for Indiatimes has been in the works since the fall of 2006. Almost a year in the making, it is a bit sad that I won't be there with the company when the marketing launch happens (tomorrow). Though the campaign was pretty much canned when I left a few weeks ago.
Oh well! C'est La Vie!
All the best to the Indiatimes team.
It pleases me no end that it is about the New Indiatimes Mail which was one of the bigger projects I did with The Times Group.
The new mail platform is based on the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Feature for feature, it beats the pants of the largest mail solutions in the world currently. When we were shortlisting the possible solutions for the new platform, we went through a nightmarish scenario of deciding between the India of today and India of tomorrow. We bet on the fact that Broadband in India will happen, sooner rather than later, and that the Indian Internet user will demand a better experience than the plain vanilla offerings that were available to us at that time.
We could have chosen to go with the India of today, and lived with a light mail solution, but on the whole I feel we made the right choice to go with this rich solution along with a lite version for slower connections.
Indiatimes will be the largest installation for Zimbra so far. So this is a very big deal for Zimbra as well. Though they have a very very large ISP in the US, who will also be using this platform in the near future, with some upgrades to the user interface.
This change for Indiatimes has been in the works since the fall of 2006. Almost a year in the making, it is a bit sad that I won't be there with the company when the marketing launch happens (tomorrow). Though the campaign was pretty much canned when I left a few weeks ago.
Oh well! C'est La Vie!
All the best to the Indiatimes team.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
My Desktop
I just got hold of the (Product) RED variant of the ipod Nano. and was connecting it up to my comp. and then I realised something... My desktop is a mess of gadgets...
With a Dual Monitor, a PSP, a 400 gig external HDD, a phone and of course the ipod...
With a Dual Monitor, a PSP, a 400 gig external HDD, a phone and of course the ipod...
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