Monthly Archives: August 2011

Hey Indane Gas! Are you really ready for web?

2 comments

My Letter to Indane Gas

Dear Indane Gas,

On 2nd August 2011, I booked a  cooking gas (LPG) refill through online booking , it was accepted and I got a message immediately that my dealer has been informed. I also got a booking reference number in the same message.  17 days passed since I booked my cooking gas but there was no delivery.  On enquiry over the phone, the dealer told me that there was no booking in my name.  I tried to go back to you but there is no way I can find the status of supply –except that one line remark “it is under process” –this was the status I got  around 17August. I really had a taxing time getting back to you with my complaint. Though you have a website!

Yes, you have  a website but did you ever check whether all the features work on it or are user-friendly? The feed-back form on the site is designed in such a way that I had to scratch my head for almost 15 minutes to convey my simple problem. BTW after all the head scratching I filled in the feedback form but till now I have not received any message from you. I had also tried to call your customer care department, if you have any that is. But for that I had to search the relevant section for 15 mins. After searching frantically on your site I found out the customer care phone number. I called them but no one picked up. Let’s put it in a simple way – Indane Gas, your website is hard to navigate and it’s equally hard to fetch information from your site.

BTW after all these efforts I am yet  to get my refilled cylinder and it is already 25 days after my booking.

Now, I have a few questions for you –

  • Do you have a system of checking compliance of order booked on line by your distributors?
  • Is your responsibility over after taking the order?

Now the surprising part comes  from my Indane distributor. He says that neither on 16th nor 17th August there was any refill order for my consumer numbe. In fact there has been no order for the last 120 days. Now, here’s another surprise. I also booked a refill order through SMS – I was given a order number and was told that I was supplied a refill cylinder on july29 – where from they got the date when my distributor tells me that there were no refill order  for the last 120 days from my consumer number and which is almost correct as I checked from my refill receipt book – So, whom did they supply the cylinder on 29th July?? Or the dates are just to deceive consumers that Indane’s SMS system sends abruptly?

As always yours truly

Meabhi

To all the Indane Gas Customers – Is it I who is suffering alone? Or there are others as well? If there are others then let’s gather all our Indane Gas Complaints especially regarding their online booking system at one place and ask these questions – Did Indane Gas after installing the online booking system even bothered to check if the system even works or not? Besides the system –did they depute someone  to take feed back from the Distributors  about the compliance of refill order through centralized system including online booking. Even BSNL has a system for generating compliance report – why can’t you, my dear Indane follow BSNL?

 

Facebook is down or what?

2 comments

I am trying for the last 30 mins to post a message on one of the Facebook pages I like. I am seeing this message ‘An error occured while writing to our database. Please try again later.’

Here’s the screenshot

 

Here’s another error that I got while posting on my wall – ‘Sorry unable to update your status. Try again in a few minutes.’

I seriously hope it’s some sort of a temporary error on their system and it recovers soon. BTW today morning I saw that Facebook chat looked a bit different, probably they’re working on it and may be that’s one of the reasons why Iam seeing the errors! Just guessing, btw! Anyways, anyone else seeing this error?

SBI’s Affair With Mark Zuckerburg Leaves Numerous By-Blows

2 comments

It seems SBI’s affair with Mark Zuckerburg has left numerous by-blows (unknowingly). Well, if you are confused then  type in State Bank of India on Facebook Search and the result page that you see is something like this-

This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are probably one hundred pages named State Bank of India and none of them seem to be officially run by the bank. The one that probably has the largest number of members has its description taken from Wikipedia and only 3 posts by the members.

Now, before I begin with the affair and the by-blow part here’s a little background on why at all did I start my SBI hunt. Well, partly because of a query I had regarding my SBI account and partly because of my mission of discovering not-so-known Facebook pages. So, I searched for State Bank of India on Facebook  and the result page was…you saw the screenshot, so you know it.

After seeing the results my first question was – which one of these by-blow pages is the official one? I had absolutely no idea whatsoever on how to find the official SBI page , so , I started clicking on each of the pages that popped up in the result page.

  • The first page had 2,564 members and the last post was on July 28 and not to mention there were tons of unanswered queries from the members. Some members even posted if it was the official SBI page. But I couldn’t find any response from the admin.

With a bit of disappointment I clicked on the Info tab and I noticed a disclaimer – This is not the official page.

 

  • I clicked on the second result on the search. There were only 5 posts made since Apr 23, 2010 that was when the page was created! “Another non –official FB page, argghhh” with this thought I was going to unlike the page but I suddenly clicked on the most recent posts and found that one of the users got the privilege to be answered by the page admin. Here’s the query and the response from the admin:

Well, I thought this gentleman’s problem was solved but after going through the other posts I found that he again posted a complaint but no one answered him this time. I found that the queries on the page were unanswered. The admin has commented only twice in the page. So, by taking a look at the page I didn’t get any clue whatsoever if it was SBI’s official page. The info section was not much of help as well.

  • With an unbridled frustration I clicked on the 3rd result and saw that the page had just 8 posts and one of them was promoting a page named Darshan Caterers from Rajkot. Now. What’s the connection between RBI and Darshan Caterers? Don’t ask me!

So, after all the maddening search for SBI’s official Facebook page I returned to my profile with a SIGH and a few quetsions.

My questions –

  1. Why do people join unofficial pages? (knowingly/unknowingly?)
  2. Is Facebook ever going to do anything like Twitter verified accounts?
  3. What can brands do to prevent such by-blows?
  4. On web do brands really control their brands?
  5. Will the majority win (Will the page with maximum fans become the official defacto)?

Update – Bhanu of bhanusmita.com has pointed out “http://www.statebankofindia.com/ its official website doesnt show any link to Facebook…so I dont think it is there in FB.”

BTW SBI had other non Mark Zuckerburg  by-blows as well. Check out http://www.seoforclients.com/blog/marketing/website-development/sbi-mutual-fund-online-transaction-please-grow-wrt-web.html