Ben & Sangeeta’s Blog

Siddhant left this morning at 8:15 AM. We drove down to Delhi on the 28th, it was Siddhant, Sangeeta and I. Arpit stayed back because he is too worried about missing school. Arpit spent two days with Siddhant at home before we left for Delhi.

Delhi is very hot and humid, quite a change from Mussoorie and the air conditioned ride down.

One of the first piece of news we got was that the AC at home concked out last night …great!! just what we needed. Well, we spent the night under fans and after taking showers, the sweat was dripping off our faces like water.

Sunday, (believe it or not) I had to judge a music competition at my brother in laws church. It was a unique concept - they has organised this competition for people who were 40+, with a view to encourage the people in churches who are not considered in the youth category nor in the elderly category. In Indian churches the middle aged group gets marginalised whereas it is very talented (they were once young too). Well that was interesting because firstly nothing begins on time and then everyone wants to sing, anyway I told my brother in law he owed me big time for doing this.

Monday we went to the mall, Siddhant needs a laptop, an external hard drive and a back pack. I had a meeting with a vendor in the afternoon and then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hunting. Oh Yes, I wanted to buy myself a camera as well…

After four hours of hunting we did choose and buy a back pack …. and a camera  not much you think eh?

Tuesday Siddhant and I went to Nehru Place, a centre for all things electronics, bought a laptop and the hard drive. When I presented the credit card to make the payment I was told that the message was 'Do not honour'. I was perplexed, I knew there was ample space on the card and I had been making the payments on time for the past three months since it had been issued to me. Actually I did not have a choice because the money gets sucked out of the account on the due date.

I called up the Bank and was told 'Sir, your account has been put on hold and you can only process a transaction after 48 hours', now I was mad - 'What do you mean that I have to wait for 48 hours? I will do no such thing. I want to speak to your manager.'

I was put on hold and then the lady returns and informs me 'Sir, your hold has now been removed'.

I did give her a piece of my mind, it boggles my mind that when I am calling to confirm that this transaction is in order that I would still have to wait for 48 hours!!

If you think that was ridiculous, once the computer is delivered to us, I am required to leave a photo ID, copy of the credit card and then they take a photograph of me holding the laptop and I have to sign the printout to confirm that I have received the laptop.

My only guess is that they have very high incidence of fraud and this their way of protecting themselves. I asked if I could have a photograph of them all with their signature confirming the warranty which they politely declined.

Siddhant thought that I was being rude and mean - and maybe I was and it was hot too….