THE CRAPBOOK

Mobile subscribers have a reason to celebrate. This is an update to my post DND.Many commented saying that they are getting calls from telemarketers even after registering.  This is the latest information from today’s TOI Bangalore edition.

TRAI plans hefty fines for pesky calls

Shalini Singh | TNN

New Delhi: Mobile subscribers registered with the national donot-call (NDNC) registry have reason to rejoice. Giving in to the growing outrage over the menace of unsolicited calls and SMSs, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has announced stiff penalties on telecom service providers and telemarketers.
   The regulator said on Monday that for the first unsolicited communication, a service provider would have to pay a penalty of up to Rs 5,000, which could go up to Rs 20,000 for each subsequent communication. A telemarketer would have to pay a penalty of Rs 500 for the first unsolicited communication, and Rs 1,000 for every subsequent communication.
   The Times of India had reported on January 17 that TRAI was planning such a strict regulation.

So guys go ahead and complain to your service provider in case you receive an unwanted call.

Piracy would be the No 1 competition for music and movie industry. Now why do the pirates survive and how come the police or the law not bringing them to justice? The answer would be simple. The public. There is a greater demand for pirated movie CDs, Audio CDs in India and the piracy business is booming like never before.

Although the law enforcers’ crack down (1 2) many piracy rackets all across India, we know places like National market In Bangalore, Bhima Palli in Trivandrum, Chor Bazaar in Mumbai still exists. We could see them often on the roads and street corners selling latest movie CDs. We can bargain with them on the price and watch new movies for as low as 20Rs.Now what is the police doing? Well it’s deplorable that the pirates sell this in public and right under their nose, so it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that the police are paid off to keep away. 

Back in college, while I was doing my engineering there was one student who supplied pirated CDs. So where did he get all the CDs from? Interestingly his dad was a policeman who conducts raids at shops who sells pirated CDs. So the CDS were taken as evidence and it was all over our hostel!!!!! 

Now how can we stop piracy? What can the public do? What can the industry do?Answer to the Second question is simple, stop buying pirated CDS. Buy originals. However with the price tag on Hollywood movies reaching above 300Rs for a movie the common man would think otherwise. He would rather download it from torrent sites than shell out huge bucks.The answer to the third question would be the solution. The industry should wake up!. Sell movie CDs cheap, like what Moser Baer has already started doing. You would notice the crowd in front of Moser Baer CD counter at Land Mark Bangalore. Compare it with the crowd at other CD counters. That should explain the difference.Now it’s the turn of Hollywood movies to step up and sell cheap like Moser Baer.

I guess price under Rs 100 would be affordable to many who are looking forward to watch Hollywood movies. Next would be the music industry. Who cares about buying an Audio CD is you can download it for free? Well we could buy it if you sell it cheap. The public has spoken with the Moser Baer initiative, now is the industry listening?

hmm, that sounds interesting. While there are thousands of divorces being filed in India stating reasons such as adultery, incompatibility or even that wife doesn’t cook, this was a landmark achievement for our courts. We know that Indian courts takes years to settle a case with more than fifteen hearings. However, in this case, the husband works abroad and had requested the court to allow him to appear for the hearings through VC or Video Conferencing, considering the expense of coming down to India every month. The court approved this request.

Interestingly, a divorce case was handled through VC by a Chennai court last year.

Although the news about people getting divorce due to many reasons (some of them strange) is sad, this measure by the court should be welcomed. Its good to know that courts are living up to the technology around !.

They won.

Read this to know more.

I would welcome this, but then, would the law enforcers assure me that there won’t be any more malpractices? 

This time it was him against State Bank of Travancore.

He had loan with the bank and the manager has promised him that he would have the flexibility of withdrawing from the loan account any time he wanted. 

 He withdraw-ed money only as and when he wanted. After two weeks the manger quit and the new person refused to dispense anymore cash from the account. He said that this is not allowed and all the blah blahs.My dad being a Manager in finance with a reputed tyre manufacturing company in India knew all the dos and don’ts in banking (My Daddy strongest!). He decided to write a complaint to the SBT head office. He didn’t get any reply. This forced him to sue SBT !!.

In a chain of events, the manager of SBT came to our house with a union leader to negotiate. There were calls from the head office to take matters out of the court. He was not ready for any negotiation.

He won the case. The court asked to pay Rs  4000/- as compensation.

You can find Part I here.

Browsing through a couple of blogs today and I found an interesting one. This was about consumer protection. This reminds me of the consumer cases my dad has filed against State Bank of Travancore and The KSEB (Kerala State Electricity Board). 

My dad can’t take it when it comes to poor customer service. (My daddy strongest!!!) ) Back home we used to have frequent power cuts (power supply wouldn’t be there for days) and when there is supply there would be voltage fluctuations (thanks to a stone crushing factory close to my home). 

 My computer UPS was down in 2 weeks. All the light bulbs had to be changed every three days. The KSEB was supplying power to around ten houses and the small factory all from the same transformer and power line. This is against the rules and regulations because they are supposed to provide separate power lines for the factory. My dad approached the KSEB office a number of times, but each time he was turned down.

 He filed a case with the consumer court. On the day before the second hearing of the case, I could see some activity outside my home. There were workers digging, some fixing a new…..transformer. In five hours they were done. Now there was no more voltage fluctuations. 

The next day, KSEB pleaded that they had fixed a transformer even before the case was registered and the case was void. This pissed off our advocate.( we dint get enough time to advice our advocate on the new developments). Our advocate wanted to pursue the case further. But then my dad thought otherwise, he didn’t want to pursue the case further.  

“But we can win” I said  ”We can easily prove that they installed the transformer yesterday!!”

 “I just wanted to know how many people (and how much time) it takes to fix a transformer. If we give them the right direction these people are really efficient” He said with a smile.

 You can find part II here.