The crow cawing outside my window in this lovely weather of Mumbai is a proof of the fact that certain things don't change at all. Thank God! Though, this goes even for the potholes on the city roads. They have a tendency to get worse but alas! not disappear or for that reason reduce in numbers. The chaos of our everyday life and the chaos in which the country is in, also seems unchangeable. While a part of the country is moving ahead, a bigger part is still fighting with trivialities of life. We are busy cheating each other over small things.
The prices have gone up but the packaging has become smaller. Are you even aware of it? You are being robbed of on both ends whiz a whiz paying more for less stuff.
Go and buy a car. You will be promised by the sales team all sorts of add-ons. The promise that you don't have to pay for the insurance, for the teflon coating and the anti rust coating brings a big smile to your face. So much of expenditure saved, your mind calculates. Your big smile is intact only as long as the car doesn't go for the first service. Then a call from the company workshop knocks off that smile because he wants to know whether with the free service you want to get the coatings done. Your logic to him that while buying the car you were told that you don't need to worry about the coatings for four years and there is a warranty on that is answered in a very convincing manner, "Oh that they say to sell off the car." You are left shocked. However, you decide to not get the coating done. Are you taking a risk with your car or you are being intelligent by not letting yourself be cheated by the servicing guy is a question only time will answer.
You want to buy a Vaccum Cleaner. Well the sales guy comes to your home. You don't have to take the trouble to go anywhere. You get a demo and you tell the person that you will look at other available options from other companies and then get back to him if you decide to buy his product. The sales person has to up his performance quotient. So, with the vaccum cleaner he promises you a bag in which you can store all the parts accompanying the machine, a discount of some percent if you order immediately and a home delivery within the next forty eight hours. The piece is so much in demand that by the time you decide to buy it, it might be out of stock. That does it! You place the order, only to discover later that the model sold to you is the one being phased out and the company as it is has a policy to deliver within forty eight hours. OH THE BAG! When the machine is delivered to you, the bag supposedly was out of stock and it remains out of stock and an illusion for you always. The reason being that from now on the sales person will stop taking the phone. If you manage to trace his boss he will promise to get back which he never will, and after making some futile attempts you will give up thinking why are you breaking your head over a minuscule bag.
How many times have you bought a mobile phone plan only to discover later that it's not as profitable as it was made out to be because only when you start using it, do you discover the hidden costs.
How many times have you bought clothes in sales to come home and discover a piece that is torn at a place which you would have not been able to notice then, and now you have to live with your buy because of the no exchange no refund policy during the sale period.
How many times have you bought an expensive electronic item with the tag of two years extended warranty only for it to go kaput exactly at the end of those three years leaving you wondering how did the company know that the product will last only that long?
Such happenings or coincidences leave me questioning myself again and again whether this is the nature being unjust to a select few or lack of ethics by the companies. But it does pinch. No not for the money going down the drain but the fact that I got cheated by my own fellow human beings. Thanks to the crow outside my window. At least somethings never change.
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