Paypal India policy change renders it useless

PayPal is a popular online payment facilitator which is being extensively used by individuals and small companies for international money transfers, mainly of small amounts.

Paypal’s popularity increased mainly because of the simplicity with which one could transfer a few dollars to others. Those who didn’t have credit cards or international bank accounts relied heavily on paypal to make payments or earn money on their international assignments.

Suddenly, Paypal India has introduced a policy change, creating an outage which renders Paypal totally useless for small time users. As per their new policy, Paypal has stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India, which means PayPal can be used only for business transactions, that too where there’s some proof of delivery for goods or services (such as shipment tracking number/billing address or other such evidences)

The worst thing according to me is Paypal has enforced this policy change without any prior notice or warning and is autonomously back dating the policy, enforcing it on already completed transactions. Pay pal is reversing such transactions done in recent past and causing huge inconvenience/loss to the stake holders who might have already delivered the services for that money. It is like your bank taking back your monthly pay deposited by your employer. Ideally PayPal (or any company for that matter) should have announced in advance that "From so and so date our new policy will apply", so that everyone could have made appropriate plans.

I was indirectly associated with an event management company (Name withheld has I've not taken permission), which sold tickets of one of its show (scheduled to happen in Chennai) online. Ticket buyers would pay via PayPal, will get a unique code showing which they could collect the printed tickets at the venue of the show. PayPal never hinted about its policy change, all tickets were sold and when organizers of the event wanted to withdraw money (which amounted to over 5 lakh rupees, as thousands of tickets were sold), PayPal blocked the account demanding that organizers show some proof, such as FedEx shipment number, that they’ve delivered the ticket. Physical delivery of tickets, for local customers, that too with reputed courier services that give tracking number makes the whole idea of online ticket booking useless. Imagine the inconvenience organizers will face when they're unable to withdraw money earned from ticket sales and they've to pay for the hall, artists, advertisements and sundry other expenses

I’ve bought 2 tickets for the show for the above event via PayPal and I didn’t get any communication from PayPal that they’re having a payment dispute or reversing the transaction so that I can buy tickets separately. In other words, PayPal has neither given my money to event management company, nor returned it to me. But the money I earned from some other source has been reversed from my account, I am not sure if it is returned to the sender.

Many individual, including this writer, got an email from PayPal which reads
Your payment of  xx has been sent back to the sender of the payment.
We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.
If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows:  (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select "Goods," and (c) provide a shipping address.
If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.
We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we're sorry for any inconvenience.
Thank you,
PayPal

Paypal hasn’t offered any explanation for this sudden change of policy and wordings suggest this could be a temporary measure. One good guess is that the personal type of payment, which is free of any charges, is being misused by companies and paypal needs to figure out how to prevent mis-use of this free service by corporates/professionals who should be paying a small fee for Paypal's money transfer services. Techcrunch has quoted a paypal official (Anuj Nayar, Director, Global Communications) saying :”I can confirm that personal payments to and from India have been suspended while we address some questions from our business partners. You can still make commercial payments. We’re trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Most of online payments could be for activities like donations, or payments for some services (like an article submitted etc) for which there’ll be no physical goods to deliver. Paypal is used in cases where either sender or receiver is a small time operator or individual who cannot afford standard payment options like overseas bank account/credit card payment gateways etc. With pay-pal virtually shutting doors for them in India, soon they’ll be forced to identify an alternate payment mechanism (necessity is the mother of invention) and that will render paypal useless.

Money is a very sensitive matter and trust is paramount. Service providers like paypal should not be playing with other people’s money, without giving adequate warnings/time for their policy change. I am sure several individuals and companies world wide are put to inconvenience by this. If the trust and faith is lost it is very tough to regain.

I’m just watching the developments to see what happens. Image from okmu.info

Work around /solution for Paypal India users:
Senders can select "Goods" as an option under "send money for" section, provide shipping address and proceed. But paypal might ask for some proof of delivery if they suspect this feature is being mis-used.


Related: Be an alert Consumer * Helium.com Policy Change impacts APAC users * Policy change @ Vegetable shop *

policy change @ vegetable shop

Above title may sound serious, but the post is not.

A neighborhood vegetable shop has started displaying this sign which says “No Selection” (Never mind the spelling. Tamil variant means Don’t pick, signaling that customers should not be choosy and accept whatever they pack and give). Before proceeding further with the post, have a look at the snap below and let me know what are your immediate thoughts on seeing it.

If you marry a vegetable vendor (or belong to family of vegetable shop owner) do you get to cook/eat fresh vegetables every day? To the extent I know, unlikely. Because vendors usually take home not so good vegetables as consuming fresh vegetable means a big opportunity cost (It could have been sold to customers for good price). Vegetables are highly perishable products with very less shelf life. Any unsold quantity directly adds to loss. Though vegetable merchants keep a provision for a part of their inventory going waste, their constant endeavour will be to sell all of their stock, including the not so good ones.  If say by experience they know that 10% of vegetable will be left unsold as no customer likes them/they are rotten/over ripe, the merchant will have to recover his cost price and profit from the remaining 90%. So in the interest of profitability, vegetable vendors aim to clear their stock by force disposing not so good/rotten/over ripe pieces along with good ones. This is the reason why vendors always manage to add one or two rotten/over ripe pieces of vegetable in your bag (by diverting your attention or by replacing the pieces you’ve selected while weighing or changing them while packing)
Most of us will not go back all the way to the store for one or two bad pieces and vendors often getaway with their tactics. Having said that, customers becoming increasingly smart/alert is a pain for vegetable vendors and it might have prompted this shop to introduce a “No Selection” policy.

As a customer how would you react to this policy change? Are you expecting vendors to suffer a loss on unsold vegetables? Would you pay little extra for all fresh vegetables? Or are you ok with a few not so good pieces if overall price is not hiked? will you go to another shop in search of better tomatoes and onions and potatoes?
Also read: Make rasam in 12 easy steps * Anil P’s recent post on Delhi vegetable vendors *  Running office canteens * Paypal Policy Change * Be an alert consumer
These two images clicked using the new Cannon IXUS 95IS

Movie/serial Shooting at Alamparai fort

Alamparai (aka Alampara) is a scenic picnik spot loated in between Mahabalipuram and Pondichery. Read my earlier post on Alamparai for more.

My 3rd visit to Alamparai fort gave me some unexpected shots- It was Friday and the place was void of any tourists, except that crew of Anand Cine Services had already arrived ahead of us and were busy with their preparations to shoot. This post only shares some photographs clicked at the location. Hope you’ll like the pics. Click to enlarge

Left Right left… A man carries an unknown equipment, while another man pulls heavy cables towards the spot (to supply electric power generated from generator van)

 

Breakfast for the crew arrives in a large container, with another assistant carrying plates and spoons.

Dogs and crows had their day in an otherwise inactive place. They had their moments of victory managing to taste the food from the open container whenever caretaker’s attention is diverted elsewhere. (I assume it is leftovers containers kept for cleaning and not the ones storing food to be served)

I’ve no clue which movie/serial they were shooting for and I am totally unaware of Tamil stars. Didn’t bother to enquire much, but for those who are curious, below photo has accidentally captured a lady, who appears to be the lead character because someone else is holding an umbrella for her.

A local lady was busy with her daily chores while a bird was watching around, probably thinking “Thank god it is Friday”

We didn’t stay there for long and couldn’t see the shooting happen. Looked like they’d take much more time and we’d more places to visit.

Brief date with Mercedes Benz

I remember an Old Mercedes Benz ad which says “Beg. Borrow. Steal. or BUY”. Beg/borrow/steal won’t work with me and Buy is something I can’t afford. However there’s a new option emerging- Rent it.

Regular readers of this blog know I enjoy driving and riding. Though this habit has been financially heavy on pocket, I hardly miss a chance to rent/drive a high end car. My self drive expeditions started off with a Skoda Octavia in June 2008 and I’ve been driving around in various rented cars once a while since then. It is a way of de-stressing: get behind the wheels and go for a long drive. Recently I saw an ad where Mercedes Benz was offered on rent at a relatively expensive but affordable rate (500 Rs per hour, 9 Rs per km). Without a second thought called them and made a booking for 2 hours, with an idea of exploring the vehicle and a ride in it. My mother and sister were visiting Chennai, so it was a perfect opportunity to go for a luxury ride.

I wanted to give a surprise to my mother and sister by arranging a Mercedes ride for them. When they asked “what is the plan for the evening?” I said “surprise” and asked them to get ready and come out. They came out, I opened the door of the shiny black Mercedes C class C220 CDI and they got in. After getting in I was asked: “so what is the surprise?”. That was like pinning the balloon… Next 10 minute I spent advocating for Mercedes Benz, explaining its comfort, cost, status symbol…My mother wasn’t much impressed and was more concerned about the rent I was paying for it.

C220 CDi is one of the entry level series by Mercedes. The AT version costs about Rs 30 lakhs (Comparatively the S-Class costs about INR 1.1 Crores). Of course the car was great compared to other regular cars, but as such I didn’t find any WOW factor in it. Unfortunately the agency was not keen letting me drive it-even for a small distance-they insisted that risk factor is too high and the car is taxi registration, not meant for self drive. So I had to settle for sitting in driver’s seat and posing for photograph, not actually getting to drive it. (That can wait… Some other day for sure)

Where do we go after getting into a Merc? No point getting stuck in city traffic where a cycle rider makes his way among traffic and reaches faster leaving Mercs and BMWs stuck behind a crowd of share autos. So I zeroed in on Fisherman’s Cove on ECR. I’d not been there earlier and wanted to check out the place. It also made ideal destination to go in a Mercedes with only few hours to spare.

Drive was smooth-luckily not much traffic on ECR and we reached Fisherman’s Cove and were let in after a thorough security check. The first thing that caught attention was the pool, which is nice. We went inside to lobby area-I was a bit disappointed-the grandeur that was expected in a 5 star place was somehow missing. I would rate Radisson's Temple Bay (formerly GRT Temple Bay) in Mahabs or Club Mahindra’s Coorg resort a step higher. The place was almost deserted (it was 4pm). I asked for directions to go to Sea Gull (name of their coffee shop, which I’d researched a bit so as not to appear clueless once reaching there)

We were greeted by mineral water bottles kept on each table with a tag: “Rs 175+ taxes, not complementary”. We took a pool side table. Sea was partially visible and pool had a few guests swimming and relaxing. A crow on a nearby tree was making some unusual noise-as if it is trained to behave properly in a 5 star hotel. We had a look at the menu, as expected they were all in 3 digits. (Sample: Coffee/tea: Rs 135 +12.5% tax). We ordered few beverages and snacks and they took their own time to deliver them, unmindful of our concern that we’re paying several rupees every minute to the Mercedes Benz parked outside.

To the extent I notice, their most expensive suite (sea facing villas) was costing around 22k per day 2 years ago. Now it has come down to 17k. Most of the areas were for residents only and certainly we couldn’t have asked for a guided tour. In about an hour or so we spent there, I found it a little below expectation overall- in terms of ambience and service. We had our refreshments, summoned our car and left. We went to a seashore, took some pics and then returned to city as clock was ticking.

Overall nice 3 hours spent trying to explore luxury, expensive one though. OK as an experimental exercise, not really worth repeating. I was expecting the driver to be uniformed-but he wasn’t. Also yellow number plate gave away the secret that it is rented vehicle. The hourly rental was a convenient scheme. Bangalore’s Car Club had a BMW and they were charging Rs 6000 for a 4 hour/40 km rental, which was not viable for me. Just hoping other cars- Audi and Volkswagen models will soon be available on rent (self drive preferably and at an affordable hourly rent)- Anyone listening?

Joining day

I had accompanied a relative and their ward who had arrived in Chennai to report at a prestigious IT company. This post is a quick narrations of certain observations made at the venue.

IT companies seem to have an unwritten policy of not to entertain location preferences of new hires. Everyone who prefers Bangalore will be assigned to Chennai, whoever asks for Chennai will be asked to join at Hyderabad and so on. (Apparently this is believed to increase productivity as employees stay away from family and will have more time to dedicate to work, Also this helps money circulation-making IT people spend on travel, phone, rent and so on) So almost all new hires reporting at this company’s Chennai office that day were from other states, mainly Karnataka and AP.

While ‘software engineers to be’ assembled outside the gate and eventually started going in, groups started forming based on language and city they hail from. They evaluated the scope in IT industry, how they squeeze their staff, how their request for a different location was denied, best place to take a PG and sundry other topics. It was interesting to listen to conversations of their parents outside. Some samples: "At Trivandrum they were very strict about using mobile phones-hope now onwards they’ll be more liberal"…"ನಿಮ್ ಮಗಳು ಜಾವ ನ? ನನ್ ಮಗಳಿಗೆ .ನೆಟ್ ಅ೦ತೆ. ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿದ್ಯ ಅದು?" (your daughter is in java? my daughter is in .Net is it better?).. "పెరున్గుడి లో ఒకటే ఫై జి చాల బాగుంది అంటే అంకల్ చెప్ప్యారు -పెరున్గుడి ఎక్కడ ఉంది?" (I’m told there is a nice PG in Perungudi-where is Perungudi)..., "9am and it is so hot already-can’t imagine summer in Chennai…" "why can’t we go inside and see-its my Son’s office after all…" "Seems they’ve about 10 offices in Chennai-not sure which office my ward will have to work from..."

When new hires arrive at a strange city for their first job, there’ll be challenges in terms of finding an accommodation, not knowing local language/city. Add to this, everyone will have their preferences and wish list (it has to be a pure veg PG, 3 of us should get at one place, it shouldn’t be too far...) This is made even more complex with IT companies never giving a clear idea as to what is in store for them during and after their training.

An opportunist business man, who apparently runs a PG (Paying guest) accommodation was very active at the scene, distributing small pamphlets to all anxious new hires and their even more anxious parents. For those who asked where is his PG, he handed out an additional leaflet which had map and directions to reach the place. During his first round, he ignored me, as I was in a casual dress-not wearing any shoe or tie like new hires with which he might have concluded that I am not a prospect and there’s no point wasting a pamphlet on me. Whenever a new share auto stopped, dropping off a dozen new hire, he would rush to the road and give a copy to all of them. Naturally he received lots of inquiries-ranging from “is it pure veg?” to "boys and girls will be in separate PGs right?” he answered all of them. During his second round he took pity on me and thrust a copy to my hand-the pamphlet was small- one fifth of an A4 sheet, but was filled with information-stating that they charge no deposit/advance, that they are just 30 mins from Airport/CMBT/Rly stn, mentioning names of all major IT companies, that it is very close to Adyar, Perungudi, Toraipakkam, Sholingnallur, Taramani and other locations and much more details.

Security guards had their chance to show who is the boss-at least at the gate, asking parents to move away, checking ID cards with extra vigor and keeping the entrance from vehicles and people.

Once all new hires went inside to report, parents waited outside evaluating what they should be doing for rest of the day. Some of them expressed interest to check out the PG of this guy, who promptly stopped an auto to take them to his place. Soon some more people gathered, our PG man abandoned the auto, got hold of a Qualis which had just dropped off IT professionals and ushered his prospects in. One more person can come with me in bike- he declared and left the venue on his bike, with a Qualis full of prospects following him. I’m sure some of them would have decided to join. His intelligence (knowing that lots of new hires are expected today), preparedness (of having pamphlets ready) and opportunism (of using the Qualis to escort his prospects) would have definitely paid off.

The day reminded me of my joining day in front of Satyam’s Secunderabad office 4.5 years ago-but that is for some other day

Similar posts: Satyam-One year later * Should IT Cos have Unions? * Chennai Roadies * Chennai MMTS photo ride * Bangalore-Hyderabad-Chennai comparison of 3 cities *

Chennai MMTS Photo ride

Note:-swapped part 1 and 2 so that part 1 appears on top-

Its a long time (about 2 years) since I commuted in Chennai’s local trains (MMTS-Multi Modal Transport System). As I walk to work and have a bike for other travel there wasn’t a need to use MMTS. Two weeks ago, 1st of Jan we (me and Ram) decided to take a ride in MMTS purely for the sake or riding in it and while doing so, photograph the city. Chennai has multiple MMTS tracks- we chose Velachery-Chennai Beach route as this route runs mostly on elevated tracks, which is good for photography. Thus the idea of photo ride was conceived and executed.

I went to Tiruvanmiyur MMTS station. MMTS Stations are considerably large in space and are spread over multiple stories. However I didn’t see any improvement in the condition of station compared to what it was two years ago. Building construction still incomplete, huge amount of space still left vacant, cleaning and maintenance still not satisfactory. Escalators are added and thankfully ticket prices remain the same as they were 2 year ago.

View of Chennai’s IT Corridor (Rajiv Gandhi Salai/OMR) & Tidel Park is nice from top of Tiruvanmiyur station (Unfortunately beauty of the IT corridor starts at Madhya Kailash and ends at Tidel Park)-Beyond that work still remains incomplete though it has been more than an year since they started collecting toll fee.

Down below, not far away from Tidel park Signal, a mobile cart was doing good business,selling breakfast. While some passengers, along with their baggage were spotted waiting for auto driver, who is away having his breakfast. (Looks like he is done and very happy-Task for you: Identify the auto driver in left hand side photo below)

Had it not been for the new year’s morning, its not easy to get a traffic free photo of tidel park signal.(This was at 9.30AM) I’m told from knowledgeable sources that the design we see on Rajiv Gandhi Salai from Madhya Kailash to tidel park was inspired from Panchabhootas or 5 elements of life: Fire, Water, Air, Earth and space. Subsequently the design team changed and the concept has gone for a toss-there’s nothing much to admire on the OMR beyond Tidel park.

There’re are few Foot over bridges across IT corridor, but are seldom used, as people find it convenient to cross the road itself, instead of having to walk several hundred meters to reach nearest FOB. Recently an attempt was made to connect FOB directly to Railway station, so that people can reach the elevated platform directly. Effectiveness of this idea needs to be seen.

I bought a ticket (6 Rs, journey should commence within 1 hour of issuing tickets-trains arrive a a frequency of approx once in 20 mins). Journey took us through some interesting landmarks in city

Also spotted a large fleet of unregistered Volvo city buses, probably waiting to be commissioned. A set of two drums (sheets rolled as drums) reminded me of 3 Idiots movie…

Read Ram’s write up on this here. Though view from the train was photogenic, beauty is somewhat compromised by a sewage canal and adjoining slums that are located right next to the track. Later we also went to some lakes in Velachery. Expect some more photos and writings in a subsequent post.

Update: Read Part 2 here

Update: read in today's post: A feature will soon be introduced in these trains to announce names of stations ahead

Similar posts: Chennai Roadies * Chennai MTC Volvo City Buses * Random Photos *