Grahakjago (S.K.Virmani)©

Corona pandemic in India vs unfair business practices of Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) a State run DISCOM  PSU under Govt. of Haryana for generating inflated bills and pressurising/ misleading the consumers to pay the bills much prior to the due date of payment during lockdown An article titled " Are Electricity Companies in Haryana like DHBVN adapting to unethical business practices?  was earlier published in this blog bringing out unethical business practices by electricity DISCOM in Haryana. The link to the article is given below: https://skvirmani-jagograhak.blogspot.com/2016/02/are-electricity-companies-in-haryana.html The author has faced similar issue again during Corona Virus pandemic. However, while discussing with various consumers, the general feedback is that such issues are being faced quite often. All the electricity distribution companies have been mandated to adhere to the Standard of Performance (SOP) as laid down by State Electricity ...

Govt. of India came out with an idea to encourage Digital payments. The digital payment has an exponential growth during demonetization as the legal currency of denomination of Rs. 500/- and Rs. 1,000/- was withdrawn overnight  to be replaced with new currency of denomination of Rs. 500/- and Rs. 2,000/-. All of a sudden the citizens were deprived on even meeting their daily needs and hence the digital payment industry saw the boom during demonetization. It is alwayz better to use digital payments as one get rid of carrying on cash in the wallets. The other advantage could be security and safety of both notes as well as that of the person carrying the currency. Ideally the use of digital payment does not only address the security issue but it is also cost effective. The perceived advantage in the digital payment process could be less operational cost for both merchant as well as Government and Banks as well as: 1. Less cost towards printing and distribution of currency at t...

National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has come out with a Fastag to enable motorist to cross the toll plaza barriers without stopping at any of the toll plaza. The toll fee as applicable to the particular toll plaza gets automatically deducted from the prepaid balance in the card. Three Banks have been nominated for such fastag cards namely IDFC Bank, State Bank of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank. The main terms of the financial cost in the Tags have been specified by NHAI for the car as: 1. Cost of the Tag           : Rs. 200/- 2. Security Deposit         : Rs. 200/- 3. Minimum balance       : Rs. 100/- The term Minimum Balance has been specified as "Minimum Balance is the minimum recharge amount to be done at the time of RFID tag activation" The plain reading of these costs indicates that the Tag would be costing you Rs. 500/- which will be having Rs. 100/- as minimum balance and the tag would be an active one...

Unfair Business Practices (UBP) of Hotels and Restaurant industry by charging service charges compulsorily      The visitors to this blog may refer to the following articles published in this blog wherein it was brought out as to how the hotels and restaurants are adapting to the unfair business practices of charging service charge/ tip compulsorily. The link of some of these articles were sent to the concerned departments as well as Hotel and National Restaurant Association of India. In fact when the author of the post took up his issue with the restaurant, the amount of service charge in compulsion was refunded back by the restaurant through cheque. 1. 13th December 2012:  जब रेस्टोरेन्ट वाला सर्विस चार्ज बिल में लगाता है तो फिर आप टिप क्यों दें ।   http://skvirmani-jagograhak.blogspot.in/2012/12/blog-post.html  2 . 21st April 2015:   Are Restaurant and Hotels adapting to unfair business practices?   http://skvirmani-jagograh...