Anil Sharma

This article is for all those who are buying under-construction apartments for the purpose of living in it. Based on my bad experience over the past 6 years, I’ve put together some crucial points that will help ensure that your investment is safe and you get what you are promised.

There has been a trend to “book” an apartment, which a builder would construct over time and deliver to you. Normally, builder promises 36 months as the time required to complete the construction but in most cases, this gets extended. If the delay is minor, you should accept it but if it’s significant, it makes sense to drag the builder to a consumer court. Also, builders make wild promises to lure customers in but fall short on the delivery. They’ll promises swimming pools, clubhouses with all possible features, green gardens etc. and just hand over a building full of apartments later.

You don’t have much choice, almost every builder is the same, seems nice when you’re booking the apartment but will show their true colors when all the apartments are sold.  You must remember that such a “booking” does not make you the owner of the apartment till you get a proper registration down with the government. Since the builder retains the rights to cancel the booking at any point of time, it makes sense not to fight with the builder till such time that you take possession of the apartment.

The old concept of “Caveat emptor” – “Let the buyer be aware” has now changed to a situation where the courts, specially the consumer courts in India, take positive action even if the Apartment Buyer Agreement is totally one-sided in favour of the builder. To be on the safe side, however, you need to take certain precautions from the time you decide to book an apartment. These points, followed strictly will ensure that you are protected to a maximum extent.

1.   Video record all meetings with sales representatives and safely store for 5 years
When you visit the office of a builder, their sales representatives presents you a fancy layout of project highlighting all the facilities and shows you a sample apartment. Ensure that you video-record every word that they say. Also ensure the video recording shows you and your family mentioning the name of the sales representative. Hold up the day’s newspaper in the video to register the date.

2.  Pick up extra copies of all brochures and store them till you get possession.
Courts recognize brochures that highlight features and project delivery dates to be valid documents for the project, in addition to the Apartment Buyer Agreement. If you do decide to book the apartment, keep visiting the builders office every few weeks to pick up their latest brochures till all apartments in the project are sold. You might notice promises are changed in the brochures over time.

3.  Ask for specific details of infrastructure being promised.
Swimming pool – What size? How many? Clubhouse – with what facilities? Jogging track- How long? Central Garden – How big?
Try to get all answers in written form, even if it is in email.  If builder is not willing to give in writing, here’s a way around – write emails from your side to all involved people about your understanding of features based on discussions. If they want to reject or correct your understanding, they will respond, otherwise you can assume you are correct.

4. Keep copies of ALL newspaper / magazine ads related to the project.
If the builder releases any newspaper or magazine ads, keep the entire newspaper or magazine. This proves that promises were made to the general public, including you.

5. Keep information/brochures/advertisement of related or nearby projects to your location
If other projects, launched around the same time in nearby areas are completed on time or before your, it will help cancel any force majeure clauses in your Apartment Buyer Agreement. It is important to keep track of features, size and prices of nearby projects along with their brochures, advertisements etc.

6. Monitor actual construction from time to time – visit the site and click pictures
This is very helpful later on to nail builder’s lies. It makes sense to just store the pictures in an online blog or Facebook page, so that other buyers can see.

7. Before making any construction-linked payment, visit the site to ensure construction has happened.
Keep track of actual construction, you should be able to answer in which year and month the 5^th floor roof of the building was cast. Keep as many pictures as you can, you never know what can help.

8. Write letters to builder from time to time seeking information about the progress of construction.
Ensure that you get written replies. Store as evidence. Also send emails from time to time asking the builder about status of construction and progress of external work such as creating clubhouse etc. Specially write these letter before a payment is due, it’s likely the builder will provide answers when they expect money from you.

9. Join Yahoo / Google / Facebook groups related to the project to interact with other owners.
If you can’t find these groups, set them up. It’s easy to do, let other buyers in the same project join and share with them whatever promises were made to you. If enough buyers join together, try to register a Residents Welfare Association for the project under The Societies Registration Act 1860.

10.  Ensure there is clause in agreement that gives you penalty for delay.
While you can’t control this, builders often bend rules for some apartment buyers and add specific clauses in their agreement.  Try to get a penalty clause for delay. Penalty for delay should be irrespective of any other clause in agreement. I have been trapped by this oversight wherein the builder wrote that penalty would be paid for a period of 5 months of delay, if the delay was more than that, contract could be canceled. The actual delay was 35 months.

11.  If not satisfied, take the builder to court.
If there’s been delay or all promised facilities are not provided, it’s very easy to fight the builder in court. Just hire any lawyer for a consumer court and hand over all documents. It’s not expensive to fight in consumer court; most lawyers take a fixed fee that can be negotiated. Try to find a lawyer who has done a similar case against a builder and won. The decision might take between 2 to 3 years but if you have all the proof, it’s likely the builder will try to settle out of court. If they don’t, let the case take it’s own turn. I’ve seen people recover significant amounts as compensation from builders.

While my experience in dealing with two builders in Gurgaon has been bitter, I’ve found that it’s not too difficult to take them to task.  I would be very interested in learning more from the experience of apartment owners in other projects.

My wife and me have been happy Vodafone customers for several years now. At home, we have an Airtel Broadband and DigitalTV service so when we needed another cellphone for our home, we decided to buy a prepaid card from Airtel (www.airtel.in). Little did we know the fact that India’s largest cellular operator has the worst service possible.

We bought a prepaid cell phone number from their relationship center in Dwarka, New  Delhi on 27^th June 2010.  Copies of my PAN card, AIrtel Landline phone bill as address proof, driving license as my ID proof, the required application form and money were submitted and verified by the agents. As promised, the cellphone activated on 29^th June 2010 and was working.  On 13^th July, I received the following SMS from Airtel – “As per Govt of India directive, documents received for your Airtel Prepaid Mobile are incomplete and your services will be discontinued. Kindly contact the Airtel Relationship Center or the Dealer from where you purchased your Airtel Mobile immediately”.  Immediately after that, the cellphone service died.

On 14^th July 2010, I visited the Airtel Relationship center to sort out the matter. They looked into their computer and in 2 minutes said they had received all the documents and passed in onto Airtel so there’s nothing they could do.  When pressed further to take action, grudgingly they pointed me to a number pasted on the wall and asked me to call the number. The number -9818334865 was of Nodal Officer Ms Neha – who spoke to me for 14 minutes. During that time, she also spoke to the relationship center people twice and at the end said she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t explain why the SMS had asked me to visit the Relationship Center if they couldn’t do anything about it. I wanted the connection cancelled but she confirmed there is no process of getting a refund (that should be illegal – we’ll find out)

Left with no option, I contacted the Airtel support on 14^th July by emailing them at airtelpresence@airtel.in – they frequently advertise this email ID on twitter (www.twitter.com/airtel_presence) – with complete details. Within an hour, I received a call from the number 9871999470 , he asked about all the details and said would resolve the problem. An hour later, I received a call from 9717894314 – he wanted to know what my issue was despite all facts being mentioned in the mail. This cheeky guy suggested it was my fault and I should submit all the documents again. I said goto hell. I received at least 3 more calls, each confirming that they would resolve the problem but nothing happened.

On 15^th July 2010, I was woken up early in the morning by a call from the number 9871999147. This guy specifically said that he was calling from the Presidents office and wanted to know if the issue had been resolved. When I said no action had been taken, he said the issue would be resolved within 1 hour.  7 hours later, no one has bothered to do anything. I specifically want to know who is this President who works with such useless people.

I’ve written twice to the twitter account @airtel_presence who replied back “Dear Anil, We are on top of ur issue, trust it will get resolved, thx” – that’s it.  No action.

If you think I’m the only one suffering with Airtel, think again. Here are thousands of people complaining about similar issues  :

http://www.mouthshut.com/product-reviews/Airtel-925020924.html

http://www.complaints-india.com/searchcomplaints.html?compId=airtel&submit=Submit

http://www.consumercomplaints.in/bycompany/airtel-prepaid-a11898.html

Here’s what I find disgusting:

1. Employees have no sense of ownership or responsibility
2. The management never gets involved – there’s no way of reaching them for a customer
3. The assumption at Airtel’s end is even if thousand’s of customers complain, it doesn’t matter, we’re still getting millions.

For a large company facing the public and providing services, there should be strict rules on quality of services. Airtel’s wikipedia page mentions 135 Million customers as of May 2010, that’s larger than the population of most countries. It’s sad they can’t deal with their customers in India properly. Companies who cannot provide good services at home should definitely not be allowed to grow outside, I already pity the people of Africa where Airtel is headed next.

I know what will happen now, Airtel will quickly resolve my issue by either fixing it or giving a refund, however, this blog post will remain on my site till the senior most Director of the company takes action against the employees who aren’t doing their jobs and publicly informs what action has been taken.

I request all to publicize this post and write all comments only on this website, so everyone can read your thoughts of what should be done against such companies harassing customers.

What an exciting race at Bahrain to being the 2010 F1 season.  As usual, this Sunday was made waiting for the race to being and then following each and every moment of it. This time, I decided to analyze the race from a management point of view and was surprised how much we can learn from a race.

For simplicity purposes, lets think of the entire F1 as an organisation, the F1 race administration as the organisation’s management, racing teams as the departments and the race drivers as the leaders or managers of the departments. Below is a summary of what I learnt.

The best leader is not always the winner.
The excellent performance in the qualifying races gave Vettel his pole position. In the second place was Massa followed by his teammate Alonso. During the final race, for 35 of the 49 laps, Alonso and Massa followed Vettel trying desperately to overtake him but couldn’t even reach near.  An exhaust problem in Vettel’s car forced him to slow down and that’s how Alonso won the race.  Vettel was the leader throughout but the winner who got the trophy was Alonso, not because of his own performance but because of the leader’s inability to cross the line before his follower.

A good leader makes winners  out of others.

Alonso closely followed Vettel from the beginning of the race. The desire to overtake him made him push himself and his car so that they were as close to the leader as possible.  In F1, races are won with differences of split seconds. When Alonso finally won, he had a clear 16 seconds lead ahead of his competitor. Even though Vettel as a leader could not win, he gave this gift to his follower.

To win, you have to keep trying

For the entire 35 Laps, Alonso never gave up and kept chasing Vettel. Under pressure, Vettel kept the speed constantly high, maybe it was this pressure that caused the exhaust problem in Vettel’s car ultimately giving Alonso a chance to win. Even after overtaking him, Alonso kept trying to increase the distance between him and his teammate. Suppose there was a problem in Alonso’s car in the last few laps that required him to take a pit stop, he would still have won because of the 16 sec gap he had created.

Management rewards winners, not leaders

After the race, the trophy and the usual champagne bottle were handed out to Alonso. In the press conference, everyone wanted to ask questions to Alonso about the victory, Vettel was all but forgotten.  Despite the exhaust problem and the engine losing power, Vettel kept the car going and managed to get a decent 4^th position earning 12 championship points, however the reward was for Alonso who got 25 points.  There are many leaders but management seeks out and rewards winners.

The team cannot win without winners

Vettel’s Red Bull Racing team equally supported his excellent performance. Vettel recorded the fastest pit stop, he was stationery for under 4 secs while the tyre’s were changed. This would have motivated him to perform better. However, the technical problem can be attributed to a part of his team not delivering. The team’s second driver, Webber only stood 8^th, giving the team a total of 16 points.

For the Ferrari team that won both the top spots, the reward is 43 points it accumulated.  The second position by Massa earned the team 18 of the 43 points, more than the total points of Red Bull Racing.  The flawless performance by the Ferrari drivers was mostly due to the perfect work done by the team.

In a team, everyone needs to perform for the team to win. However, the team cannot win without the leaders becoming winners.

Management policies take the organisation forward

The decision to do away with refueling during the race has made it so much more fun to watch for the audience. For the teams, the cost of operations has come down, it’s safer now and the whole hassle has been done away with.

By changing the scoring pattern such that it rewards more points to those who win, the management has ensured that competitive spirits are kept high. These policy changes (http://www.formula1.com/news/features/2010/3/10498.html) make F1 an even more interesting sport to watch, resulting in higher profits for the organisation.

I could go on and on, analyzing various other events, teams etc but I don’t want to convert what was an exciting race into a boring management lecture.