In 1994, when Prabhudeva danced on the top of a transparent bus to woo some girls in the Tamil movie Kadhalan, he didn’t realize that inadvertently, he was peddling some common Indian antics.
- Stalking while putting life in danger
- Climbing on the buses because who needs AC
- Basically, Taking it Easy Policy
But I have digressed at the beginning itself. I am not talking about our chalta hai / swalpa adjust maadi attitude. This is an appreciation post for the opposite of the Take it Easy Policy i.e. the Return it easy policy. Unless we have bought something from our local general Kirana store whose uncle knew our family, it is difficult to return or exchange things.
If you have bought some item or service which has turned out to be faulty, you will have to say bye-bye to your ego to get it returned or exchanged. If the service is Telecom related, you will have to say Bye-Bye to 2 hours of your time and it would be a sure shot way to get a free hair cut. The IVRS is designed in such a way that the longer you keep pressing 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, …, more are the chances of you pulling your hair out. You have to hassle with the shop or service owners. You have to be over-patient. You have to just wait and just pray to be lucky. Ironically, filling Tax-Return is a process meant to make you feel that it is okay for the government to keep our taxes because filing return would be so taxing, that your are better of either not paying or not filing returns.
On the other hand, we have some services (mostly e-commerce based) who will return your money within seconds of you showing a slight discomfort. For instance, Uber and BigBasket are two of the services I used recently. In Uber, as usual, the driver canceled and as soon as I complained, I got my money back. In BigBasket, as soon as I messaged them that veggies I got from them are ‘somewhat infested’ with things I don’t want to eat as a side-dish, they wasted no time in returning the money. Now, Amazon is the world’s largest e-retailer/marketplace but if you can find the customer care/help desk number easily or if you find the log-out button on Facebook in one go, then the UI designers of these companies would have to be let off. They are like Hotel California, easy to enter, but difficult to return.
Many things in life are so easy to take. Returning them is tricky. We should make both things equally easy or difficult.
Photo by Karla Hernandez on Unsplash
