Hi !

I am posting this at 2 AM in the night because I got so much disturbed by what I read just now !

By now, most of you folks out there must have heard of IIPM, Mr. Gaurav Sabnis, and Rashmi Bansal. If you haven't in a Nut Shell, JAMMAG, a popular MBA magazine by Rashmi, an IIM-A alumnus, carried out a report evaluating the various B-schools present in India. She rightly went out to point the fake advertisements carried out by IIPM [Yes, the Arindam Chaudhari School, who recently delved into Movie Production of all things and came up with the maha-absymal Rok Sako Toh Rakh Loh, which is soo bad, that even me couldn't watch it after the first 20 minutes]. Following Rashmi's take on IIPM, her blog was splogged by IIPM activists [U should see the posts to know what I mean], but thankfully she din't budge and stood up to what she had said.

To just illustrate how stinking IIPM's campaigns are :

[By Hanoz, a current PGP-1 at IIM-Ahmedabad]

I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad and when i saw the IIPM ads for the first time and saw IIPM ahmedabad (magnificient towers, et al) i wondered where it is and if it's so big and state-of-art with 7th-wonder-of-the-worldish architecture, how come I never noticed it.

I got to know about it accidentally one day....IIPM Ahmedabad is situated in Hollywood! (A large slum area quite close to IIM-A) and it's a dingy li'l building (4-6 storey) regular commercial complex with glass !!!
Its called IIPM tower and a uniformed chowkidaar is seated down there.

on further inquiry I found out that only 2 floors were owned by IIPM and they had paid some amt. to have the name hanging from the building! A cramped li'l place with absolutely no infra and located in a stinking area all conveniently washed out and replaced with a nice background using [Adobe] photoshop for the advertisements!

Just thought that this might be interesting for the junta to know !!

So, before IIPM goes all hollering at Rashmi or anybody else, they should look down their own horses, which crossed all limits of decency today.

Well, now talking of Gaurav, he carried a post linking to the JAMMAG story and was harrassed in numerous ways. First, he was served a LEGAL NOTICE [Yes !!] by IIPM's legal department and splogged as well. But, then, when this didn't work, IIPM pioneered Educational Militantism and threatened Gaurav's employers' IBM that all the IIPM students will burn their IBM Thinkpads before IBM's Delhi HQ, if Gaurav didn't remove his posts.

And guess what Gaurav did ? He resigned today. I feel really stupid now. All Gaurav had done was exercised his Freedom of Speech now and asked for Arindam C's credentials [which I doubt now as well, agar hain, toh why is he so afraid of showing them ? Remember Rajiv Gandhi's disparagement about his degree from Cambridge, which was resolved a year back ?]...

My sympathies with Gaurav, and Arindam C...U might have sold a hazaar books, but you sure have forgotten to be decent and humane.

A very pained :(
ranjan

Update 1: Online Petition has been created to protest against IIPM. Please sign the petition and tell these guys to take their trash elsewhere.

Update 2: BlogWorld has actively taken up the gauntlet against IIPM and let it be known, that We won't be cowed by some idiotic sploggers who dare curtail our freedom of speech. Attached below is a list of Bloggers who have actively carried posts about the Issue (Thanx Kaps !).

Harini Calamur, Press Talk, Varun's Thoughtful Chaos, Srini, The Arbit Council, DesiPundit, Anshul, Charu, Patrix, Muthuvel, Thalassa Mikra, Jagan, Vijay Krishna, Vatsan, Mridula, Jo, Varna, Amrit Hallan, Ash, Shivam Vij, Swaroop, Jujitsu Mode, Uma, Abi, Toufeeq Hussain, Shub, Ranj, Shivam, Abhishek, Rajan, Havoc, Kaushik, Chandru, Alpha-Q, Mandar, Kaushal, Chenthil, Tony, Bonatellis, Apurv Pandit, Scudie, Press Talk - K, Sriyansa, Miss J, Neha, TablePost.Com, Chitthacharcha (Hindi), Sujatha, Hitchiker, Sowmya, Saket, Varun (Part 2), Press Talk (Part 2), Vijay Krishna (Part 2), Dhananjay, Sriram, The Comic Project, Curious Gawker, Jai Arjun Singh, Secular Right India, Jaya Jha, Navin, Sudhish Kamath, Ravikiran, Vinaya, Niket, George Thomas, Ajay Bhat, Jinal, Om Malik, Kitabkhana, Jagan (Part 2), BigBlogLog, Kamesh, Transmogrifier, Chernoff, Varun (Part 3), Hitanshu, Srikar, Rajkumar, Almost Useless, Falstaff, Sunil Laxman, Mercatus, Arzan, Nitin Pai, Veer Jain, Nupur Dave, Nirav, Jitendra Mohan, Mayank, Varnam, Soumyadip, Uma MD, Vishal, TTG, Chandru (Part 2), Angry Grad Student, Anantha Narayan, Pradyot, Amit Chaudhry, Sandesh, Dilip D'Souza, Chenthil (Part 2), MMK, Salman's Shirt, Bharat, Nikhil, Kaushik, Aditya Kuber, Icarus Prakash (Tamil), Infinite Circle, Ketan, Durga, Kamlesh Singh, Pankaj, Harish Kumar, Aparna, Ashish, Swarnasrikrishnan, Rachel, Shel Israel, Rahul, Kaushik and Bidisha, Srijith, Anand, I-Sight, Logical Thinking, Sakshi, Shivam Vij (Part 2), Gururajan, Dhananjay (Part 2), Bhagya, Kunal, Sandeep, Ramanand, Satish Vijaykumar, Ashwin BS, Flying Death, Vayanasala (Malayalam), Shivangi, Govar, Harini (Part 2), Shreyas Ghuge, Prufrock, Amit Chaudhry (Part 2), The Unknown Indian, Prasoon, Killer Bunty, Suhail Kazi, Elne, Abhishek, Ravi, Aishwarya, Ram Viswanathan, Curious Gawker (Part 2), Wanderstruck, Leela, Vishwanathan, The Bat, Scribbler (Part 2), Vaibhav, Weblogsky, Varna (Part 2), Divya, Sujith, Jroller, Madhoo, Sowmya (Part 2), Shoefiend, Varun (Part 4), Ash (Part 2), Ravikiran (Part 2), Veena, Salt Water Blues, Hyperorg, Ashutosh, India Blogs, Karthik, Arnold D'Souza, DesiTrain, Suds, Vijay Krishna (Part 3), Saurabh, Senthil, Arzan (Part 2), Uma (Part 2), Urmea, Kingsley, Sad Old Bong, Anshul, Rajesh, Lubu, Ravikumar, Neha (Part 2), Varun (Part 4), Anti, Instant Kaapi, Lazy Geek, Minorscale, Ferrari Prabhu, Emma, Kishore, Chenthil (Part 3), Aekta, Kashyapapeya, Sambhar Mafia !!
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So, now that my posts have turned into Email cribs :), here is continuing the series - what to do, my little Blog is the only expression mode left for individual consumers like me taking on beeg corporates. So, this is apropos my last post which can be read here. To summarize:

1) I had been an Airtel Internet + Landline user for ~5 years before I moved to a new house last November. My billing cycle used to run from 23rd of every month and I moved on 21st Nov to my new house. I filed a "connection movement" request on 21st Nov which was supposed to happen in 7 days. After waiting duly, I filed a disconnection request on 28th Nov - subsequently the Nov bill had been generated and I paid it promptly.

2) I get repeat Airtel calls over December and January as to "Why I want to disconnect" but they simply did not disconnect my connection and kept generating Bills for Dec and Jan, charging me for non-usage :). Funnily, every customer rep I spoke to, said "Yes, this is wrong and will be corrected".

3) Finally the calls stopped in February and I had my mental peace back. This actually had such traumatic effect on me that I did not let my wife install a landline in our new house :) and for Internet we went for a local agency Triple Play which is a MVNO for BSNL, so that when and if we require to disconnect, it is easily done.

4) Today, on May 11, I get a new notice from cureman@in.airtel.com reproduced below:
                                                                                 Date 9-May-12

To,


Mr. Ranjan Kant



Address - D-103, Maple Heights Sushant Lok-1 122002 Gurgaon




Del No                01244360947
Account id -       14309089





Dear Sir / Madam





Sub: Outstanding Dues on your Airtel Telemedia.





Ref: Del No: 01244360947 Account No: 14309089





We have not received a response to our Previous Tele-calls/Field visit & Letters 
Regarding non–payment of bills towards the above said account for a net outstanding of Rs. 1470.32.





We must now tell you that we expect payment to be made immediately. If payment has not been received immediately we will pass the matter to our solicitors with instructions to commence legal proceedings. This will be done without further warning to you.





P
lease make the payment in favour of M/s.Bharti Airtel Limited -Telemedia Services A/c: 14309089by cheque/DD payable at Delhi NCR or by cash/credit card. If you have already made the outstanding payments prior to receiving this letter you are requested to furnish us the proof of payment to avoid further action.





If you have any queries please do get in touch with our representative Sunita  Mobile Number -9650397854 





For any further clarification please contact the Airtel Office





Thanking You





For Bharti Airtel Ltd. 





Authorised Signatory

This is Computer generated Letter and does not require any signature 

So, as mentioned in the email above, I called up Sunita, whose only refrain was 1. "Paisa toh aap ko dena padega" and 2. "Poora mat dijiye, compromise ker ke case close keriye" - she had no clue of what my case was, her only concern was to get the money. Then I figured out this is surely a "Recovery agency" and I did a small google search and see for yourself what it turned out for this band of Hooligans called Cureman - and you would think why would such a big, "renowned" corporate like Airtel hire them, but at some level I am not surprised.

Anyways, after the highly "decent" phone call with Sunita, I replied to Airtel as follows:


From: Kant Ranjan
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 6:27 PM
To: 'Cureman@in.airtel.com'
Subject: Re: RE: Regarding Your Airtel No.01244360947Act no.14309089Ot.1470.33Pr

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I have never in my life not paid any bill in my name if it is billed correctly, but in this case I have been billed wrongly which will become apparent once you take time to understand my case. I had called up "Sunita" as mentioned in the doc but instead of listening to my case, all she did was shout "Dena toh padega".

So, I am also clear - I will not pay. I have not used an iota of the services I have been billed for and hence I will not pay. Just because you are a recovery agency supported by a Big corporate with a battery of solicitors doesn't mean you can bully me into wrongly billed payments. Please go ahead and do as many legal proceedings you want.

Meanwhile, I will take to Social Media and ensure this injustice and pain is highlighted and becomes well known to the World.

Many thanks for the document, it actually helps me showcase my case easily.
@BB 9790 +91 9873637900



So, now lets wait and see when these dudes choose to sue me :), will keep you posted. And you know the funny bit - I had actually applied to port my mobile no. from Vodafone to Airtel (somehow Voda signal in my house is not that great), but as you can surmise, I very quickly rolled back my porting request - atleast I haven't seen Vodafone using such dastardly tactics, I really hope they don't :), else I will have to shift to BSNL on principle :) !!


Ah, Life and all that. Till I write next !


Adios,
Ranjan


P.S. I would just appeal to three people:


1) SRK and Kareena: Guys, you should seriously think if you want to be associated with a brand which uses these tactics with honest customers.


2) Aamir Khan: Airtel is an official sponsor of "Satyamev Jayate" - does it deserve that ?
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