If you force your potential customers to divulge unnecessary personal details, you run the risk of alienating them and probably losing them even if they have been your customer before.

The motorcycle we use is nearly 20 years old, so we were looking around for a new one. It makes a lot of sense to purchase it on loan, so I looked around for banks that offer two-wheeler loans. As I had already availed of a car loan with HDFC (www.hdfcbank.com) and felt quite satisfied with their service, I went to their web site. Sure enough, the biggest promo on the home page was for two-wheeler loans.

The payment app reverts to the home page after entering the credit card detailsWhat's the point in calling yourself a leading telecommunications provider if you can't ensure that your systems work?

We've all heard of DRM (shouldn't that be really Digital Restriction Management?), that harebrained technology thought up by equally harebrained folks to restrict the rights of how consumers can use even things they have purchased.

Customer service seems farthest from the minds of the bigwigs at Kodak India. My experience with it over the last two days has convinced me never to go near a Kodak camera product in any hurry.

It started with a request from my relative in Mangalore who had purchased a Kodak LS743 in Dubai last year and wanted help in locating a service centre to troubleshoot a serious problem- the lens woudln't retract.

I learned another lesson today about why planned living is the basis of frugality and why careless living must be shunned as far as possible. At the very least, it will help you get good quality sugar at Rs. 7.50/- less than the market price!

Sugar and Cream

When the Tamil Nadu government initiated a programme a few years to move the creamy layer (read economically well off) out of its public distribution system, our ration card was moved to category H, indicating a high income family (well, we are actually middle class, but that's another story). Ration cards with H marking were stripped of provision of rice, fuel and other essentials.

As I spent one hour at IOB's Mahalingapuram branch in Chennai for a 'Anywhere Banking' money transfer transaction that normally takes just 5 minutes, I pondered about the following:

• Customer Servicing: This seems an individual rather than an organisational concept in India. One guy working at the bank had the gall to tell me that he had more important work (his very words!) than attending to my transaction. He said the bank's system might hang if he tried to find out if the money transfer went through, so he would do it at 2.00 p.m in the afternoon.

  I barely controlled my anger, said it was important to know if the transfer went through as my car loan account in Delhi was due for payment today. I also demanded to know what would happen if the transfer didn't happen. He said it would go 'as usual', meaning the next working day. Brilliant, don't you think?

  
  

Yesterday evening, I attended the Samanvaya Freedom Lecture in Mylapore, Chennai.

Mr. J. Prabhakaran of the Nallor Vattam (Circle of the good) spoke about his experiences in meeting nearly 300 people/institutions all over TamilNadu serving society in silent, unobtrusive but outstanding ways.

There were less than 100 people in the hall, but everyone without exception was moved and thrilled by the experiences and stories that Mr. Prabhakaran recounted. It was an inspiring lecture and I have no doubt that those who attended went back determined to serve society in their own small ways.

For the last two months, I have been perplexed seeing a google chat request from an unknown person whenever I logged into google email. I never added that id to my chat list, but the mystery was finally solved today as that person also happened to be online.

Here is how the conversation went. Names changed as I don't want bots to pick up email id's and send spam:

other_person: from manchester of south india www.mib.ac.uk
other_person: hi karthik
long since i mailed u
me: Hi, I am sorry, but I have been seeing your messages, but not able to place you at all.
other_person: i didnt get birmingham....but am heading to manchester for phd...

I attended a religious discourse (called variously as upanyasam, satsangam) by a relative of mine yesterday evening in a local temple in West Mambalam, Chennai. My father and my periappa (father's elder brother) accompanied me.

It happened to be Aadi Perukku too. The month of Aadi has special spiritual significance in Tamil Nadu, especially for Shakthi temples.

The discourse itself was in Tamil and was a fine effort. None of us knew Ganesh could speak so well. It was organised by the Dharma Prachara Parishad of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, which has been in the news lately for reasons that deeply concern Hindus.

Setting up a web site is fairly simple, you would think - especially with all the blogging software now available. But, it took me nearly three years to have one.

I still remember the difficulties I had figuring out how to install Moveable Type on my hosting account. And, then I tried Blogger only to give it up quickly (still have my account, though). And then tried a host of other options including Userland, B2 Evolution, Geeklog, phpnuke, postnuke and Wordpress.