Hello! A warm welcome to the blog once again. Today I am going to talk neither about Technology nor about Philosophy but something which is relevant though.
My last post was about Social media where I had focused on detecting fake content which was spreading virally over various social (media) platforms.
This post is about my personal experience in dealing with one of many daily problems solved using the social media
tl;dr (long story short) I was conned by two petrol pump employees, and then action was taken on them by the concerned department, thanks to the power of social media.
This starts with the day I happened to re-fuel my bike at a Petrol Station at Barkatpura, Hyderabad. I was always suspicious about this place, but as this station was the first one on my way to office I often used to re-fuel my bike here.
The modus operandi of those people was as follows:
When a person used to ask for re-fuel, the pump operator used to stand in front of the meter apparently to block the meter reading, and the other (cashier) would stand opposite to the operator. As the re-fueling process would start, the cashier would wait for some time and distract the customer asking him to re-fill air in his vehicle and as soon as the person got distracted and set his eyes off the meter, the operator would stop filling and reset the meter and would claim that he had completed filling.
One morning, as usual I went to this petrol station and asked the operator to fill petrol for 100 Rupees. I (with the suspicion in mind) started staring at the meter with full concentration, but somehow the cashier distracted me by shaking my bike and telling me to fill air. After that I turned back to see it was reading '70' on the meter, and I told the operator to fill the remaining 30, and whoosh! The meter was suddenly reset to '0' and the operator told me "It was 100 and not 70" and I (feeling angry, and helpless at same time) was not having any evidence to prove my point as the meter was already reset.
I moved on, and reached office thinking to be careful from next time, but this guilt of a loss of 30 Rupees per 100 Rupees was bothering me and I didn't want this to happen to anybody else too. I had to do something about this.
I had a couple of things in my mind: First, I had not taken any bill so that I could relate it to my transaction. Second, there was no CCTV installed in the premises of that station, atleast not around the pump.
I discussed this with a colleague at Office and he explained me how for every transaction at pump, logs are generated which contain the details of the amount for which petrol was filled in every session, with date and time stamps.
Then came an idea. We have heard a lot about good governance using social media, now it was time to put it to litmus test. I searched for the complaints board on the official site of HP, found their complaints section and posted my complaint there.
I wasn't satisfied because the complaint section was limited to just about 200 characters and I couldn't elaborate everything.
So, I found out the official handle of Hindustan Petroleum on Twitter and tweeted them my complaint to see if I could bring it into their notice as early as possible.
To my surprise, I received a reply within 15 minutes from their twitter handle.
I e-mailed them the details at the above mentioned e-mail ID.
I then sat back and waited to get an update from the concerned department.
After 5 days from the date of reporting I received call from the Deputy Manager (Vigilance) of HP for Hyderabad and she asked me to elaborate the incidence and also informed me that those (two) employees were proven guilty and were fired. The Manager had also apologized for the inconvenience.
Response time: 5 days
Believe in the power of Social Media. Use it for the good. Things take time to get sorted, but give it a try.
That's all folks!
This post was to show how Social Media can be put to use to deal with our real life problems and not only for dealing with candy crush requests.
I rest my case.
If you have any queries, you can simply comment below, or can mail me at itsmerif[at]thelogicalkid.in
See you soon with a new post!
itsmeRiF
The Logical Kid
My last post was about Social media where I had focused on detecting fake content which was spreading virally over various social (media) platforms.
This post is about my personal experience in dealing with one of many daily problems solved using the social media
tl;dr (long story short) I was conned by two petrol pump employees, and then action was taken on them by the concerned department, thanks to the power of social media.
This starts with the day I happened to re-fuel my bike at a Petrol Station at Barkatpura, Hyderabad. I was always suspicious about this place, but as this station was the first one on my way to office I often used to re-fuel my bike here.
The modus operandi of those people was as follows:
When a person used to ask for re-fuel, the pump operator used to stand in front of the meter apparently to block the meter reading, and the other (cashier) would stand opposite to the operator. As the re-fueling process would start, the cashier would wait for some time and distract the customer asking him to re-fill air in his vehicle and as soon as the person got distracted and set his eyes off the meter, the operator would stop filling and reset the meter and would claim that he had completed filling.
One morning, as usual I went to this petrol station and asked the operator to fill petrol for 100 Rupees. I (with the suspicion in mind) started staring at the meter with full concentration, but somehow the cashier distracted me by shaking my bike and telling me to fill air. After that I turned back to see it was reading '70' on the meter, and I told the operator to fill the remaining 30, and whoosh! The meter was suddenly reset to '0' and the operator told me "It was 100 and not 70" and I (feeling angry, and helpless at same time) was not having any evidence to prove my point as the meter was already reset.
I moved on, and reached office thinking to be careful from next time, but this guilt of a loss of 30 Rupees per 100 Rupees was bothering me and I didn't want this to happen to anybody else too. I had to do something about this.
I had a couple of things in my mind: First, I had not taken any bill so that I could relate it to my transaction. Second, there was no CCTV installed in the premises of that station, atleast not around the pump.
I discussed this with a colleague at Office and he explained me how for every transaction at pump, logs are generated which contain the details of the amount for which petrol was filled in every session, with date and time stamps.
Then came an idea. We have heard a lot about good governance using social media, now it was time to put it to litmus test. I searched for the complaints board on the official site of HP, found their complaints section and posted my complaint there.
I wasn't satisfied because the complaint section was limited to just about 200 characters and I couldn't elaborate everything.
So, I found out the official handle of Hindustan Petroleum on Twitter and tweeted them my complaint to see if I could bring it into their notice as early as possible.
To my surprise, I received a reply within 15 minutes from their twitter handle.
I e-mailed them the details at the above mentioned e-mail ID.
I then sat back and waited to get an update from the concerned department.
After 5 days from the date of reporting I received call from the Deputy Manager (Vigilance) of HP for Hyderabad and she asked me to elaborate the incidence and also informed me that those (two) employees were proven guilty and were fired. The Manager had also apologized for the inconvenience.
Response time: 5 days
Believe in the power of Social Media. Use it for the good. Things take time to get sorted, but give it a try.
That's all folks!
This post was to show how Social Media can be put to use to deal with our real life problems and not only for dealing with candy crush requests.
I rest my case.
If you have any queries, you can simply comment below, or can mail me at itsmerif[at]thelogicalkid.in
See you soon with a new post!
Regards,
The Logical Kid
