Buying AC? Don't waste time this year!

Mercury has risen very high in Pune. April 24th recorded the warmest day of this summer with the maximum temperature during the day reaching 42+ degrees Celsius. Anything above 35d turns my room into an oven. Because of the ill-placed windows, it lacks cross ventilation So, we finally realized that we needed an AC for the first floor bedroom. I did a quick survey on the net and narrowed down to two brands LG and Onida. The important criteria were, good after-sales service and the cooling time.

I did some more survey by visiting Tata Croma and Dass stores; eventually bought LG 1.5 ton split AC from Dass on the 18th. LG looked promising because of the 3 star BEE rating and many more features it offered. Among the notable ones were automatic deodorizer and controllable four way swing. The price 26k too looked reasonable. I was promised the next-day delivery and free installation. Delivery was indeed done on the following day. However, installation was to be done by the LG service people. Apparently, what was looking promising with LG had failed. The service from LG is terrible. Nobody showed up on 19th and 20th to install AC. So I called up LG customer care on Monday, the 21st. The lady there told me that they had just received my installation request, that is, on 21st. With this started the my customer care calls marathon. I called them twice everyday from 21st through 25th. Everyday, I was promised installation the next day or even the same day. I wrote to the LG CC via email to fetch nothing more than further promises. And as you must have guessed, LG has not kept a single promise that it made.

When I went to Dass to return the AC unit I had purchased; they explained to me the whole chaos they were going through. Because of the LG's free installation offer, Dass alone were selling 150+ ACs everyday; hence the service centre was unable to cope up with the demand. Finally, Dass promised me that they will do the installation themselves if the LG service doesn't do it within a day. So, if you are buying an AC this year - that too in Pune - think twice!

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Can cheap realty be reality?

The subprime crisis may have struck in the US, but real estate markets around the world are feeling the heat. Among the badly hit are most of the Indian, Chinese and Malaysian property cos. The evidence can be found in the equity markets. Some leading Indian real estate firms are trading at about 30-40% discount to their net asset values. Indian property stock prices have dropped as much as 50-67% and underperformed the Sensex by 23% in the first quarter of 2008. [Source: ET]

But is that a good news for people wanting to invest in real estate? Well, at least experts seem to be banking on it. A blurb in the leading newspaper in India reported that the property prices could fall by 20-25% by the third quarter of 2008. This however turned out to be a joke when association of property builders in Pune, India decided to increase the prices of built houses by 100-400 rupees a sq. foot. The primary reason for the hike being the inflation in the steel and other construction material prices; and not the land price.

Realty players are, however, still bullish on the markets and are talking of turning around very soon. An interesting thing to observe will be the government's policies to bring inflation under control. These are almost certainly going to be in the form adjustments to CRR; any increase to CRR is definitely going to make property players' life difficult. I'm hoping that the government locks out the mortgages and I get a chance to buy a cheap house in a prime area in a city like Pune. :-)

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Microsoft Swells; Inorganically!

Microsoft has recently acquired their MSN partner, Farecast. The giant had singed a deal with Farecast last summer to power their airline search on MSN. The acquisition wasn't a surprise according to the sources. It's the price that Farecast were bought at. A whopping $115 million. What Microsoft found promising with Farecast, was probably, the niche of predicting airfares. The rumors of Farecast acquisition were in the market for some time now. Just a week back, news was floating on the blogosphere about a secret acquisition of the Farecast for $75m.

With all these bids and acquisitions coming from MSN (Microsoft), it clearly indicates that the company desperately wants to clinch the Internet "giant" title that currently Google has acquired.

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Incessant Greed: ICICI doubles minimum balance requirement

A friend of mine was thinking of opening new bank account which would offer him free access to all ATMs (or at least good number of ATMs), free debit card and almost everything that a private/foreign bank could provide. The most important criterion was the minimum average quarterly balance requirement. Some banks required the same to be 25 grands per quarter and some even asking for 75 thousand. This guy was ready to keep as much as 10k rupees in his bank account for practically no interest in return. I kept telling him that ICICI bank would be a good bet because it gives most of the services he needs and at a lesser price (as he has to keep only 5 thousand rupees there).

Today, I received my quarterly account statement from ICICI. Enclosed with it was a letter titled "Revision of Average Quarterly Balance Requirement". In simple words, now you will have to keep 10 thousand rupees in your ICICI According to the bank, it had not changed this amount since 2000 and hence was long due. But I don't buy that. Was it done to keep schedule of charges in tune with the inflation? or was it done to keep the crowd away from the bank? Question is not whether you could afford to keep your 10 grands idle, but whether bank really needs your money? The move asserts that these private banks are interested in catering classes rather than masses. It will, however, be interesting to see if it really improves their service.

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