I am CA Siddharth Ranjan, a consumer of Indane Gas, bearing Consumer no KLG 18847. My dealer is Kleen gas, # 26 (SCR) Kharvel Nagar, unit- III, Bhubaneswar.
Till date, since obtaining the consumer card one year back, I have taken only 4 (four) Gas cylinders from the above named dealer and on all four occasions I had to personally visit their office and plead before them- personally- to get the cylinders.
At their office I saw- in their computer- that about 10 booking have been made in my name and all those have been delivered!
To appear concerned they have made provisions of multiple telephone numbers and also a cell number where one can make reservations through SMS.
They frustrate genuine consumers, like me, in the following manner:
1. It’s virtually impossible to reach to one of their customer care executives as all the numbers provided by them remain perpetually busy or the calls are not attended despite the telephone ringing for a very long time. Even if you are fortunate enough to reach to one of their representatives the curt answers and tendency to evade or lie leaves no other alternative but to visit them personally.
2. As fraudulent reservations are made, from their side, the computer system automatically rejects genuine cylinder booking requests sent through SMS. For the system may have been programmed to send an automatic SMS intimating the rejection of the booking if a booking has already been made with in 10/15 day. Though the genuine consumer may have taken the last delivery a month back; now owing to the fraudulent booking/ delivery at the dealer’s end the genuine booking of the genuine consumer meets with this rejection. Now also he is left with no other option but to go personally and plead his case as he can not talk to them over the phone.
3. Personal visits cost a lot of opportunity cost so one would not be able to run after them every time and they benefit by this.
Rampant illegal use of subsidized cooking gas at commercial establishments like hotels etc and increasing use of the same in cars and autos has put an enormous pressure on this subsidized product.
Ready availability of cooking gas in the black market and their wide illegal use points out that a lot of people are involved in this. It’s no surprise that all the complaints yield no redressed or just cosmetic reprieves, in the form of expeditious allocation of a cylinder to the complaint after a few personal visits to the dealers place.
A realistic solution would be to do away with the subsidy; for the genuine consumers anyway pay up the extra money and only the black market and the enforcement officers are benefiting at the expense of revenue!
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