For those who just joined in, I have a small account of my issue on ranaonline.com. I was frustrated enough to create a website for it.

I was among the unlucky few who ported their number and were left hanging between the two service providers, old and new. It was strange that the providers were same in my case, Reliance Communications. I applied for number porting on the 2nd Feb, and when nothing happened, I enquirer on the 15th Feb by calling the Customer Care. The trouble started then.

The super excited CSE marked my number for porting, which means he shut the service from Reliance CDMA end. I could not have known about it till the 16th Feb afternoon because I was able to make calls and send messages from my CDMA set, but wasn’t receiving any SMS or calls. I thought this was one of those lucky days when the marketing guys forget that you exist!

I tried to call everyone since then. Customer Care was the first step, calling them every day to find out the status of the process. Their favourite answer was that we have escalated your request and it will be processed ASAP. There was no one who was willing to take the onus of getting it done ASAP. I tried to speak to the Managers but that didn’t work. I wrote the the Customer Support email address but no one answered.

I realised that I had to do something beyond that. I wrote to the Nodal Officer. No Response. I wrote to the Appellate Officer. No Response.

I didn’t know what could I do beyond that. I tried to call the Nodal Officer and the Appellate Officer. Their numbers were answered by a lady who said that the email queries were handled by a third person and gave me a number that was not answered.

It had been about 20 days. While I had another Vodafone number that was working fine and I could be reached by those who I wanted to reach to me, it was the messages that I was more worried for. I had this Reliance number since last 8 years. I had given this number to all the institutions who wanted to send messages to me. This list included all the banks, credit card companies, mutual funds, marketing companies, insurance companies, stock brokers, exchange and depositaries and I don’t know who else. Not receiving any messages meant that I could not transact online, I didn’t have any update on my portfolios, I couldn’t make most bill payments or do anything that involved an OTP, a One Time Password.

What could I do?!? I searched the Internet for someone who I could trust in the company. Who could be better for this job but the CEO of the company!!

I wrote an email to the CEO, mentioning my problem, attaching the mail trail, requesting him to take the onus of the task of getting my number activated. Somewhere in my heart I knew that this was a waste, the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the company had more things to do than oversee individual customer problems. I was wrong!

I wrote this at about midnight on the 7th Feb. On the morning of 8th Feb, I received a call from the CEO’s office, acknowledging the mail and assuring me that they were working on it. After that, I received almost 5 calls from the Gujarat office of the company, asking me various details of the account of these 20 days, telling me that they were really working on it.

By 5 in the evening of 8th Feb, I received a call from the local Reliance Web World telling me that they had a SIM for me. This had the number ported and activated to it, and they wanted to deliver it to me!

At 6PM, I was receiving calls and messages on my Reliance GSM number, and browsing the Internet at 3G speeds.

It was shocking for me to believe that the CEO of a company would bother to read the mail from a customer, one in a hundred million, and act on it.

I love the company!

Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

From: Agent Thomas Green
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)

(IC3 accepts Internet crime complaints from either the person who believes they were defrauded or from a third party to the complainant.)

My name is Agent Thomas Green of the FBI, I’m using this medium to inform you that we recieve a complaint about some internet frauds attempt which involves you and some culprit. Your complain has been reviewed and approved for immediate actions.

After our thorough scrutiny, we realise that you have been defrauded in one way or the other by some people claiming to have huge funds waiting for you. Some of the culprits reside in your country while some are outside of your shore. We have so far arrested atleast 6 people involved in these schemes and further investigation is still in progress.

Meanwhile, the FBI compensation department has agreed to refund a partial amount of the money recovered from the culprit totalling the sum of US$250,000.00 (Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand US Dollars) to be returned to you. To avoid any illegal/fraudulent act, these money has been preloaded into an ATM card for your own conveniences and you can cash it at any ATM machine in your country.

To utilize your claim, we request that you provide the following information for proper filing:

Your full name:_____________________
Your mailing address:_______________
Your mobile number:_________________

Fill appropriately and send to our paymaster via email:

Agent Fredy Simon
e-mail: fredysimon@aol.com

For security reasons, your Personal Identification Number (PIN) code has not yet been activated until your final review.

Best regards,

Agent Thomas Green
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

While I post this here, I want you to know that I know at least 3 instances where people have fallen prey to this Nigerian scam and lost their money. They feel bad not because of losing money only but more because they were well educated and knew that there is no dead relative, old banker, Iraqi General or Oil Baron who would leave money for them.

Greed!

I was trying to look for a nice template for Zen Cart, which I have installed for the new domain, ITShopIndia.com. This site is supposed to be a place where the buyers of Computer parts and Accessories can connect directly with the suppliers and manufacturers and get products at wholesale prices. I reached the site of Kuroi Web Design, which has demos of free Zen-Cart templates. To appreciate the service by Kuroi Web Design, I decided to Tweet the page using Twitthis. I started to browse the top twitted pages and found a nice article by Seth Godin, the marketing guru. Phew!

The article is about personal branding and the Google effect. It talks about three people who applied for a job and how Google revealed the truth behind their claims. It is important to realize that privacy has a new meaning in the Internet era. People may think that they can disconnect their lives by not signing up to FaceBook, Orkut, MySpace and the likes, but it is not true.

Recently, I was seeing my own profile on FaceBook and realized that someone had tagged me in a photo. With over 2 billion photos uploaded, almost everyone in the world who has ever been clicked must have been tagged at least once, or will be tagged soon. It is true that you can restrict people from tagging you in pictures but you need to have a FaceBook profile for that!

You need to be on the network to ensure that you are not on the network!

It is difficult to remain behind closed doors when there is someone on the prowl all the time. The crawling spiders will not let any stone unturned. It is better that you are in control of the situation and manage your Online Profile judiciously. Even if you consider your privacy very important, just ensure that you have a decent public profile available to those who seek it, lest they will have to settle for what is made available to them.

There are armies that must not be attacked, positions that must not be contested, commands of sovereign that must not be obeyed.

The simple application in business is that it is not possible to do everything. At times we have the opportunity to divulge our energy into things that we really wanted to do. These opportunities may even seem very lucrative. It is, however, not intelligent to do all that we want to do. It will be like eating all that is served or taking all that is available.

I’ve had the desire to acquire more clients and get more business. The only reason I have stopped myself from doing it is because I know that it may not be possible to keep all of them happy. It will only mean that I may even lose the existing bunch; not a happy thing to happen!

There have been multiple translations of the book and I have two different versions, however I like the one with a foreword by James Clavell, for he has also re-presented a few sections of the book in accordance with the modern times.

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

One may KNOW how to conquer, without being able to DO it.

I recommend this book to everyone and I believe that it is a great book for someone who wants to be a good leader. It is available for download and reading HERE, without any cost.