Victory is MINE!

Any of you who have been watching my blog since I came to God’s Own Country (thanks to both of you!) may remember that when our possessions arrived from Jaipur in the late summer, several of them were damaged.  Since September 8, I have asked the moving company to make good their contract and pay me damages for the items.  I have them photographed, itemized, and sent several forms at least 6 times to no less than 3 people.  Still,  no love, no rupees.

At the beginning of April, I lost my patience and decided to try a different track.  I wrote to the most recent moving company employee who lied and told me they would resolve the issue within 21 days and told them HE had 21 days to resolve this issue, or I had prepared a very damaging advertisement that explained how unresponsive their company had been, and was going to put it in the Jaipur newspaper when I visited there in early June.  That seemed to get their attention.  A flurry of emails asked me be patient (7 months doesn’t qualify, I guess) and that my case would be resolved.  I responded with a simple “21 more days of patience left, oh, no, now 20.”   I expected to be placing an ad (hadn’t written it yet, but somehow I feel like I could have come up with a homerun) when surprise of surprises, I got an email today that looked like another apology without action, but had an attachment of a check made out to me, which they didn’t bother to tell me how I was to receive.  Actually the email was confusing, because it sounded like they were congratulating themselves pretty heavily on getting the stuff here at all.  Here’s the beginning: 

Dear Sir,

This is in reference to your email message dated 17-04-2014 regarding the subject consignment. We thank you for your continuous support and patronage. We have the best network and proper infrastructure for the safe delivery of your sensitive and high value consignments. State of the art warehouses, mechanized handling, containerized vehicles, Online Tracking; CCTV vigilance etc. is to ensure its safety and security. 

However, sometimes due to external factors and rarely due to human error, there are unforeseen cases of loss during transit.

As I read on down it explained that even though they were basically not at fault, and “ We also agree that a cheque cannot compensate the inconvenience caused. This gesture to compensate with a cheque is to purely minimize your monetary loss.” 

Whatever, somehow I think I will still feel better if you pay me what you promised to pay after you broke my bookshelf into several pieces, broke several pieces of other stuff, etc.

I was elated to have made them do their jobs, but I responded and said this was a nice beginning, but I still didn’t have the check….  and now comes the the part that made S really guffaw….. They replied thus:  Mam:  Same has been couriered to Trivendrum address through overnight courier on 20^th may’14.

 Same will be receiving within 2 working days.  

An overnight courier that takes 2 days, now that’s India!