Ameet Speaks

This blog has moved!

Ameet Patil — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 13:55:27 +0000

Please visit my original site: http://www.ameetpatil.com

Big Names but pathetic service.

Ameet Patil — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:13:57 +0000

Service level agreement in India is one very important thing missing amongst the way people provide service in Indian businesses. Everyone is so casual about things that he/she is least bothered about their customer’s time.

Yes. Time. In today’s fast moving world where things change left right and center within minutes – TIME is an important factor. My ongoing stint with the HDFC Bank Ltd. for example is a great example that show how bad a simple thing can get.

The bank by default provides online internet banking services but does not allow you o transfer funds to different accounts. Great thinking to make internet banking secure. We recently requested for a third-party transfer access to the internet banking. Oh wait a minute, did I say recently… sorry it is now nowhere in our recent past. Shall I say we requested this last year in Oct 2009! Yes. That was nearly more than 3 months back! The bank has still not given us the access we requested for. Can anything so simple can take so long? What wrong did we do? Despite having to sign the documents again and again, still no results.

Can people not understand that customer is why they are in business and customer satisfaction should be their utmost priority? I have to follow up on this issue each time. Not once have the people from the bank taken the initiative to do it themselves.

This is not just with HDFC Bank, the trend is prevalent in all kinds of businesses. When will the Govt. act to protect the customers. All the Consumer courts, etc. I am yet to knock on… but is this what others also experience? I am ashamed to be amongst a bunch of pathetic losers.

Wake up India! Embrace the reality. Serve your customer well! Good Service is equal to Good and Happy Customer!

E-mail: missed sending an attachment?

Ameet Patil — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:16:26 +0000

This is so common these days that I chose to write about it. Emails have become a crucial part of our life now. All communication now happens via emails. People applying for jobs, applying for higher studies, asking for information, and many more. Ever wondered what happens if you miss attaching an important file to your email? I get job application day in and day out. Many fail to attach their resumes/CVs. Question is: Do they know they haven’t attached their resume? Will they ever come to know?

What do I do?

How can I help? Do you expect me to write back to you asking for a resume? Sorry, that is simply not possible. I get 100s of them and I don’t care if one or two don’t have their resumes attached. They are straight away sent to trash with no second thoughts.

It might not just be job applications. People think different in different parts of the world. What will they think of you when you miss an important attachment?

My Message: Get hold of your lives… organise and double check before you send that very important email.

Felt nostalgic: this time I was a tourist in York.

Ameet Patil — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:34:36 +0000

The train to York from London was late as usual. Got off the train, stood in the queue for taxi,… got in a taxi and said, “XX Hobgate please.”. Yes. York was once my home. We used to live in Hobgate. This time round I visited York on business much as a tourist. Every street I passed, every bar I crossed, the walls, the minster, everything brought back profound memories I can never forget. Felt very nostalgic. A few snaps for remembrance.

Recession does the gullible house owners.

Ameet Patil — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:07:59 +0000

I met Jennifer after almost 6 months and from what I discovered, I had to write something about it. This is a log of events that have made life terrible for Jennifer.

I know Jennifer for almost two years now. She was our very sweet and special landlady when we were residing at Hobgate in York. Life keeps changing and we had to move to India. This was during the peak recession period in the UK (end of Dec’08).

Jennifer obviously didn’t want her house to remain vacant for longer. For all her previous tenants she used to manage the property herself. She got fixed all repairs or maintenance work. Increasingly it was getting more and more painful for her to find the right people and get things fixed. So naturally, this time, she chose to subcontract the management part to a letting agent. For only a minor charge per month (50 GBP / month) she would be relieved of all the hassle – is what she thought.

The agents initially promised her all sorts of non-existing services just to make her commit to them. The deal was signed and a new tenant occupied her house. Jennifer was bound to the contract wherein she was stuck with whatever tenants the agents brought in until the tenant left themselves. Despite being the owner of the house Jennifer couldn’t evict her tenants.

Now comes the real effects of recession. The first month past, she didn’t receive the rent in her bank account. On calling the agents they said there was some error and would set it right ASAP. Eventually she received the money after a month. She thought this was a one off and let it go. However, the same thing happened with the second, third and fourth month rent as well. She keeps calling their office… they keep giving her lame excuses, transfering call from one person to the other… adopting the usual phone harassment techniques.

This time I met her, she was in very bad shape, utterly disturbed and complained of unnecessary stress due to the agent. She has a heart condition and getting old each day. Is this how one treats a simple and honest house owner. Hey guys… is recession that bad that you have actually forgotten human values? How about some innovative thinking? perhaps a new business idea? Stop stealing… whats not yours is really NOT yours.

Ian’s magic on the Organ.

Ameet Patil — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:49:27 +0000

It was one of those rare Saturday afternoons when the clouds were at bay and the sun shining upon us (a bit too hot for York). Me, Ian and Johnathan chose to take a short walk after lunch. Through the loch, we came upon a Church which we found was totally unmanned when we entered. It was the only church in Elvington (I think) and Ian showed me around when we chanced upon the organ.

I am a bit of a player myself (never learnt it formally) but didn’t feel brave enough to have a go that day. Ian started to play something very simple and slowly turned up the tempo… He is amazing at it… great entertainment to end the visit. I couldn’t resist it, I had to capture it on my camera. Here’s a video snippet of one part of the show. Thanks Ian.

Windows Vista misbehaves: opens new windows for each folder…

Ameet Patil — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:56:16 +0000

This is a repost of: Hans Melis from here only slightly edited.

Recently, Vista started opening folders in a new window even though “Open each folder in the same window” was selected in the folder options. Obviously something had changed but I didn’t know what. There were more indications that something was wrong, including:

Explorer opens folders in a new window, ignoring the folder options setting.
The Windows flag on C: is gone.
DVD-drives are labelled as CD-drive.
Trying to access a CD/DVD results in a Format blank disc dialog box.

Searching the internet resulted in heaps of complaints about the new window issue so finding the right fix wasn’t easy. It turned out that Internet Explorer 8 was the culprit. So there you have solution #1: uninstall IE8. Actually, that’s not a solution so I wasn’t satisfied

Eventually, I found a comment on the IEBlog with a list of 19(!) steps to fix it. Fortunately, and as noted in the comment too, step #11 seems to be the critical one. I was able to solve all issues mentioned above by doing this:

Open a command prompt as administrator (right click -> Run as Administrator)
Type: regsvr32 actxprxy.dll
Click OK in the popup window.
Reboot

And Vista was back to its normal self. Yummy!

System.out.println(“RapiTime Stack Analyser”);

Launching Uproot.in (Indian Classifieds Site) …

Ameet Patil — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:40:09 +0000

The most awaited stable release of the Indian Classifieds site is finally up. Visit: http://uproot.in. The site offers users to post their advertisements absolutely FREE of cost. The site caters to almost all cities in India and there are numerous categories one can post an Ad into.

After several weeks of development and alpha testing by friends and family, we are releasing a stable version the Indian classifieds website uproot.in.

Ladies and gentlemen, please point your browsers to
http://uproot.in

What is UpRoot.in ?

A simple website to post classifieds online for free. It has been exclusively created for Indian users, and covers all districts in the country (600+).

Everything about the site is geared towards simplicity, including:

the look — very few graphics + dynamic interface
the operational model — zero intervention between seller and buyer is our policy.

What is it not ?

While making the site, one path we did not tread (nor intend to tread) is social networking. We will likely add more features in the future to facilitate collaboration between groups of users. But we don’t expect it to become a core feature of the site.

The reason is — keeping things simple for everyone, in particular the average or internet newbies.

A brief walk-through of UpRoot.in

Here are some of the features of UpRoot.in

Ads that offer and Ads that want

Broadly speaking, every Ad has either something to offer to the viewer, or wants something from the viewer. It is specified during the creation of an Ad, and helps viewers to quickly find items that offer or want something from them.

Specifying the location

Viewers can choose to filter their Ads depending on the physical location. One can choose a specific city, a state or all locations in India.

Privacy

We are very concerned about your privacy and take it very seriously.

There is an in-built mechanism to contact users, without needing to divulge either the seller’s or buyer’s contact information until each party voluntarily chooses to do so.

Membership

Users/Visitors to the site can view/search all advertisements without requiring to login. However, to protect your privacy, you required you register as a member in order to post a new or respond to an Ad.

Membership on Uproot.in is absolutely FREE, and requires just a confirmation of your email address. You can choose your own profile-name aka avatar.

Stay tuned

There is more to come. Thanks for your attention. Please do check it out. Here’s the link once again:

http://uproot.in.

We would be delighted to hear from you. Send us your feedback!

Stay tuned for more…

Our new family member: Bruno!

Ameet Patil — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:40:20 +0000

Bruno: our Prince!

It was a chance meeting arranged by my Sis that day. It was hot that summer afternoon and we had to leave in a hurry. Me, Harshad and Pinks went to a person we know in Camp area Belgaum who had this cutie pie for us.

I spent most of my childhood around pets. Me and Pinks were very fond of animals and used get home anything we found cute. Our Pet journey started when I was too young (II standard) while in Goa, at the time – we brought home two cute little mice.These were the laboratory ones (white fur with red eyes) – the knockout mice as they are called. I wish we had digital cameras then… would have definitely posted their photo here. .

Anyway, after the mice in Goa we moved home to Deogiri (in Bellary district) where we slowly moved on to Birds. We brought home injured birds, wild birds like sparrow, wild parrot (one that does not talk like us), bullbull, etc. Our job was to wait until the bird healed and then let it free! It was great fun… at school the only thing on my mind would be – “what my little pet would be doing right now?”. Then came squirrels, rabbits, and of course three dogs one after the other – Rocky, Bunty, and another – the only female doggy who got robbed even before we named her.

Then we moved to Belgaum and had to concentrate on studies and career. Our granee wasn’t interested in pets at all so we had entertain ourselves petting others pets. At the time, I told myself – “I will definitely have a cute doggy when I grow old”.

Even before I realised two years into a software job and I left India for UK to do my Ph.D. at the University of York. Taming and feeding myself was in itself a huge burden (a far fetched dream) and so I forgot about our little friend to be.

Voila! Start of this year and we permenantly moved back to Belgaum (my home town). “Can I now have a pet at home please?” – were my thoughts. Just a week back we all had witnessed the gracious Dog show in Belgaum and I knew – “Getting my own pet at home wasn’t too far from here”.

Bruno after his 1st bath.

So here we were, waiting intently outside our camp friend’s shop for the cutie to arrive. I told myself – “Say No without hesitation if you like it”. In the past we have felt pity grabbed anything that came along.

Bruno's Profile

The poor little thing arrived on a motorbike, in scorching sun. The person put it down on the hot summer tar (road). He was 42 days old and immediately started limping, jumping here and there. We realised the tar was burning his tender feet. Oh… dear dear… he was so cute that we could hardly find anything wrong. It was an instant yes from us! Pinks, me and Sush gave him a shower and played with him all day.

So here we are – Tanisha named it Bruno and thats how we brought home our new family member.

Returning from the British Empire to our motherland.

Ameet Patil — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:33:39 +0000

People always used to ask me – “Is India a poor nation?”. And my quick response was – “What they show on the tele is only a small percentage of India. India today is way beyond any developed country in terms of technology and infrastructure…”. It is true. Most TV programs (documentaries or news reports) shown abroad portray India as a poor nation and its people starving to death.

Having lived in the UK for the past 5 years I never realised how one gets used to their new found home (mine was UK at the time). It was 31st of December 2008 when we embarked onto the journey back to my motherland… once for all.. never to look back… to start a new Life with my family and friends.

Intense heat welcomed us at the Chatrapati Shivaji Airport in Mumbai as we struggled to find our pre-paid taxi. As it was our last trip, we certainly looked like someone who had squeezed in an entire house into our suitcases.

Taxi ride home from airport.

Our first problem: The Taxi didn’t have a carrier on top to carry our heavy luggage. “Never mind”, said the taxi driver and started piling them one on top of the other in the boot of the car. The car which looked generations old gave me a suspicious look.

All the way from the airport to our relative’s house, I cursed my luck, the driver and the taxi for not having a carrier. I was only counting minutes until one of the bags gave away and created a big havoc for vehicle following us.

The driver was reckless in his driving… this is how you should drive here sir was his response when I suggested that he drive carefully. Surprisingly we made it home without a scratch. I figured I had to learn a lot about this part of the country and its ways of trade.