Loading ...Where is Kingfisher Airline headed?
Its been sometime that I have blogged because of some personal reasons. Now I am back.
The best decision Vijay Mallya has made so far
Vijay Mallya has finally made a wise decision. He has decided to get rid of Kingfisher Red. As I have mentioned earlier, the biggest mistake that Vijay Mallya made was to buy Air Deccan. You cannot have a low cost airline and a premium airline run by the same company. Jet made the same mistake and so did Vijay Mallya. While branding, we have to give up something to get something. We cannot be everything to everybody.
Do not take loans from Standard Chartered Bank
This is a follow-up on my earlier post. Can you believe that Customer Service Manager of Standard Chartered Bank called to convince me that what they had done was legal and as per their contract. I cannot imagine that intelligent hot shot bank executives who must have studied at all the top schools can come up with such a scam. If this is true, I would recommend to all of you out there who are planning to take a loan from Standard Chartered Bank or thinking of opening a bank account with them, don’t do so as you might be debited with charges that you never thought you had to pay. And if you can’t afford to pay their illogical charges, you will the additional expense of going to the Doctor to get medicines High Blood Pressure and hyper tension. My response to the customer service manager’s illogical argument is given below.
Why is Standard Chartered Bank cheating its customers?
We took a loan from Standard Chartered Bank in Nov 2010. We are located in New Delhi. There was no mention of annual charges. Even the schedule of charges they gave me didn’t mention anything about annual charges. All of sudden I found that theu have debit us with Rs. 37,000 as annual charges. My suggestion to all of you out there is NOT TO DO BUSINESS WITH STANDARD CHARTERED BANK because you don’t know what they will debit you with. The letter I wrote to their hot shot top executives is given below. These guys can’t make money in a fair manner and they start manipulating customers to boost up their profits.
Creative resource for businesses and creative professionals
I am happy to inform you that I have expanded my creative designing and resource website www.brochure-designing.net to include the following:
Customer Frustration Industry
When you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will. When you don’t resolve customer complaints, you will be responsible for the start of a new industry known as the customer frustration industry whose sole purpose is to get justice and value for money for the dissatisfied customers.
Should corporates get banking licences?
Since the time I have heard that the government is planning to give new banking licences and that a number of corporates like Reliance, Religare and others are waiting in line to get one, sleeping at night has become a little difficult. I believe that none of the corporates should be given licences. No discussion. Why? Let me give you my reasons.
I should have also received the Economic Times Award
At the recently held Economic Times awards ceremony, Bharti Foundation was awarded the award for corporate philanthropy. My argument is that I along with million others should have also been given at least a citation if not the award with Bharti Foundation. I believe I and a million others had also contributed to the Rs. 200 crore corpus which Bharti Foundation spent on opening of the 500 primary and secondary Satya Bharti schools. In fact, I believe that I and a million others should have been the award for funding the Rs. 200 crore corpus while the Bharti brothers (Sunil Mittal & Rakesh Mittal of Airtel fame) should have been given the credit for managing the effort in an efficient and effective manner. Incidently, you could have even contributed towards this effort without knowing about it.
Capt Gopinath has the urge to return to low-cost aviation
Capt Gopinath is known as the pioneer in low cost airline business in India but he did not make the low cost airline business model successful in India. It is low cost airlines such as Indigo and SpiceJet which have made the model successful. According to Gopinath, there were a number of reasons why Air Deccan failed. He first blames it on an airline cartel which is keeping the prices of air tickets at an artificially high level. Even if this was true, isn’t selling an airline ticket for Rs. 1 just absurd. Another reason he gives for Air Deccan’s failure is that Jet Airways started predatory pricing. First, I am not sure that Jet priced its ticket for Rs. 1. Second, did Gopinath expect that the competition would just sit back and let him do what he wanted. Actually, it was Air Deccan which used predatory pricing by pricing its tickets at Rs. 1. I think apart from its pricing, Air Deccan had another major problem which even he admits when he says, “The market was expanding rapidly. I was adding aircraft every month, as I wanted size, scale and reach . . .” So, what’s new? We have heard this story before. Subhiksha tried to do the same thing and landed itself in a mess. It is always the quest for size, scale and reach that has landed entreprenuers into trouble. Why? Just greed. They want to make a fast buck because the faster they increase size, scale and reach, the faster the valuation of their company goes up. They shift their focus from building a profitable business to increasing size, scale and reach. I just hope Gopinath does not do the same for his cargo business.
There is really something wrong with Honda City’s clutch
I had blogged in 2009 that I had to replace my Honda City Clutch after just 30,000 km which is a sure sign of poor quality. Honda dealer and the company gave the usual excuse that I was riding the clutch. Of course, I had proved that to ride the clutch, I had to be either drunk all the time or just stupid. Honda’s CEO also did not listen to my woes as well as ignored all my appeals.