How I was cheated in India.

Rented a Toyota corolla in Hyderabad for 8hrs. He was actually there for 6hrs. Yet demanded 20% more than he orally quoted for 8hrs.

Rented a Toyota corolla for 4 hrs. He dropped us in a place and said that he needs to return a ledger to his office and will come back in 30min. He came 90 min later and made us wait for 30min. We went to 2 other places. In the 3^rd place he said he needs petrol and was gone for 1hr. He asked us to pay for the entire 4hrs. I have a feeling that he made money on the side.

Wanted to recharge airtel phone at a local place my in-laws knew in Madras. We paid money upfront. He said 15 min. After 20 min, we said that we will do little shopping and come back in 30 min. After we went back in 30 min and waited 15 more min, we asked for money back. He made us wait for another 15 min to give money back. Went directly to Airtel retail location and got recharged in 5 minutes. No idea what this guy was doing. May be he gets a cut and so he is a lower priority for Airtel.

Wanted to get DSL service from Airtel in Hyderabad. The guy asked if I want wireless and asked about $40 equivalent for a DSL wireless router which he said I would own. It did not work. They did not take back the router. I had no real service, wasted several hours of my time. I was stuck with the router and I was forced to pay for 10 days of service I did not get plus I was stuck with a useless DSL modem.

My cousin wanted my help to invest in Indian stock market. A citi bank guy approached him and I was there. He was pitching very high risk mutual funds for a 2% fee on an investment of 200,000 which was Rs. 4000. We decided to open account at ICICI brokerage. The commission per trade was about Rs. 50. We did not plan to do more than 1 trade per week. When we bought NIFTY ETF, I noticed that the volume of trading was low because the difference between ask and bid was lot more. For example if ask was 100, bid was 101 1%. When we bought we had to pay 101. 2 weeks later, we saw ask was 101 and bid was 102. Since we are selling we bid 102. Not sold. After a while we had to sell at market price. What we got was 99. So, instead of gaining 1% in 2 weeks, we lost 1%. That means brokers made money. We closed the account and opened an account in the US. It did just fine. In the US, if the ask in 100, bid would be 100.02 and market price may be 100.01. Huge difference.

Summary:

Big difference in what is promised and what is delivered. Clearly, they do not care about customer satisfaction. Goal is to say anything to get your money.