Dandha #1
Day #1
I had never looked into our LPG gas bill until then..
My mom had given me Rs. 700 to pay up for cylinder and when the delivery boy came i just took the cylinder and handed over the money to him. The delivery boy demanded an extra 10 Rs and asked to pay up quickly, it was then i actually saw the bill and realised the amount to my shock is just 670 Rs.So knocked off by the extra amount that we were paying all along i raised my voice to question why the extra amount that we are paying is not even recorded in the bill. But there it was a lightning struck upon me, the person who was delivering was just an ‘assistant’ of the delivery boy and he had connected me to the actual delivery guy through call. It was then i realised ‘Isme kuch toh jol hai’.
With a detective instinct and a gut to unravel a mystery there i was figuring out the gist.
One word with delivery guy on the call was enough to stir my nerves to understand this is a big dandha. After a word fight with the on call delivery guy me posing as a friend of Asst. Lokayukta officer (local corruption fighting bureau) the guy let me walkaway without had to give the extra 10 Rs.
Now my calculative mind started working:
The guy was taking 38 Rs extra for every delivery he was doing, Lets near it to 40 for easier calculation. Assuming even if their are only 100 deliveries in my locality (which is way too less) and considering its a 30 days a month running business. The guy would be making:
40 Rs * 100 deliveries * 30 = 1,20,000 Rs extra income!!!!! (Per Month not per annum)
Now i got down to do some R&D. The assistant delivery guy who seemed to be innocent in the story, i thought would be my point of entry. Took him for chai to understand more and the story unravelled itself.
The Gist:- Main delivery guy takes all this extra money sends a cut of share to the delivery agency so there no issues from that end. He has 5 assistants to look after 5 different localities(So now its 5 times his previous calculated income i.e, near to 6 lakh Rs) Pays them 250-300 Rs per day (good earning for a jobless guys for less amt work). Keeps the remaining for himself.
After getting to know all this, I went onto research a little further on the internet to see if someone has already taken this issue to their hands. Although i found some news and sites covering we don’t have to pay extra apart from what is there in the bill, nothing much on the fight front was available. [P.S: This inspired me to write this post @ 2:00 in the morning]
Now to put some more gravity into the issue, My first reaction to the issue was to complain to the concerned gas distributing agency about this person with no shock they did not receive the call(for the entire day). I immediately searched online and raised a consumer complaint in IOCL regarding the issue. Again without any astonishment i can say i haven’t got any response from these guys as well.
Food for thought: I can only wonder in this world of customer focused startups which guarantee less than hours SLA’s, why cant giants like IOCL outsource this part to a startup? I think they would do a far better job at it than they could ever do.
Also this issue has been around for way longer than i thought it was. Here i found an article where one of the RTI activist obtained docs that say “consumer need not pay anything more than the amount mentioned in the bill, as it already has the provisions for money to be paid to the person delivering the cylinder“. So unless something is not part ur bill you are not entitled to pay for it. Here is one more dating back to 2011
So next time when your gas delivery boy rings the doorbell, hands over a bill and then demands Rs 700 or Rs 710 for the new cylinder, think twice before you pay the amount.
Overcoming–
Now lets see how to overcome this, Recently petroleum ministry launched ‘Online payment facility‘ for LPG refill to bring consumer convenience, transparency & cashless transaction i.e, Consumers can now make online payment for the cooking gas or LPG cylinders at the time of booking.
Again once you get the receipt of payment ensure you don’t pay any extra to the delivery guy and convey to him that you have received an Email from government to not to pay a penny extra for delivery and if he still troubles ask him to connect to the delivery agency.
P.S: A small social research, Please leave your comments or share this to as many people as you can, lets try and see how many people we can touch..
