Big Bazaar ya Chor Bazaar...

After this post (Billing Blues...) highlighting the frequent billing errors in the retail outlet across out metro's... I still thought that this could be just an inadvertant mistake, a data entry error, a human faux-paus...

But today, just 2-3 days after the previous instance, we encountered this once again. Today - 20th December 2006, at about 6-6:30pm we went to the Big Bazaar, on Old Madras Road, Bangalore – the much-hyped “Biggest Big Bazaar” of India.

Picked up a lot of usual items, juices, groceries etc…

Somewhat alert after the previous post – we were conscious to track the billing. And guess what, as expected there were the usual con jobs…

The billing agent at the counter swiped the barcode reader on a ‘Sundrop – 1 litre pack’ – and guess what – instead of an MRP price of Rs. 73/-, it billed Rs 80/-. Another item – a pack of ‘Everest Masala’ had an MRP of Rs 42/- but the bill screen recorded it as Rs 49/- after the barcode swipe.

Now that we were constantly watching this – we interrupted the agent on the spot. As expected, the first response was ‘Sir, bar code error’… and he quietly tried to enter the price manually. But we were adamant that we wanted to speak to the manager. Our constant requests were avoided – by the agent and the few other agents who gathered there. On persistent insistence, one agent supposedly went off to get the manager – returning in 2 minutes to say that manager wasn’t present at that time.

What? The “Biggest Big Bazaar” doesn’t have a manager!!! It was obvious that they were avoiding it…

But we didn’t intend to budge – and a system hang added to the wait time at the counter anyway. Since we refused to move further – the agents brought forward a newbie looking chap to us – as the manager. Somehow I was not convinced that this was the manager – and the “temporary badge” gave him away. On being confronted on his role, he chickened out – saying that he was a trainee manager. Not sure what that means. Once again we were back to the demanding that the manager show up. Now the so called trainee manager went out in supposed search for the manager. No sign of the manager still.

My wife took it on herself to go hunt out the big man – only find on 1^st floor that the big man and the trainee were yapping away. On seeing her approach, they made a quick haste towards the billing counter as if they were

Finally 30 minutes into the imbroglio – the manager did show.

So the manager - Mr. Aftab Alam came to the counter and readily started shouting at the billing agents – I don’t know why. They were acting to the script… So was Mr Aftab Alam extending the script as well... The manager was however not ready to agree that this was a reoccurring problem. Instead to make a show of concern, he asked someone to take off all the items (Sundrop/Everest) from the displays and not to sell them anymore. A good show was put up to make us feel that this was just an inadvertent mistake… Till a day ago I too would have fallen for it.

But not anymore – and here is more of why?

More user distress records…

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Big_Bazaar-115061-1.html

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Big_Bazaar-113747-1.html

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Big_Bazaar-113361-1.html

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Big_Bazaar-97815-1.html

….oh too many of them out there… and so far I only looked up only mouthshut.com

Wonder what Big Biyani is doing… you don’t become a Walmart of India by cheating customers…

I am increasingly convinced that there is something to this by design…

For long there have been 'chor bazaars' in some corner of Indian cities, where a buyer got some useful stuff for cheap - just because someone somewhere had been robbed.

Is this the retail model of it now...?