Dear Fellow residentsI wish to report an incident that happened this afternoon at the Nilgiris department store (Vigyan Nagar) next to our villas.I had bought quite a few eatable items including boxed organic eggs and was standing in the cash counter to pay.
Out of curiosity I checked the expiry of the eggs. To my surprise the Mfg date stamped was Sep 5 and the carton mentioned best before 15 days if not kept refrigerated. Clearly the product had expired long back (today being 26th).
I went up to the Manager to show this to him. He just shrugged off and told me it can always happen as they have over 6000 products. My courisoity increased and I then went back to my cart and started looking at the expiry period of other eatable products I had bought. To my further suprise, over eight different products including Mixture, peanuts, munches, chips etc (all from noted brands like Haldirams) were well past best before date . When I went back to the Manager again, he got terribly annoyed and started abusing me, even stating that I had the choice not to buy.
I told him that we have a belief that shops like Nilgiris would have a proper inventory mangament methodology; that they will not sell substandard products and were concerned about the quality that reaches their consumers. The Manager was not willing to listen. By then other customers started watching this. He got even more annoyed and got another guy.
Both these "gentlemen" literally booted me out of the shop.I am sure many like me would be surprised that a noted super store like Nilgiris can sell outdated products, that too eatables. The worry is even more, since many times we send our domestic help or children to buy such products and they are not expected to look at each and every pack So much so even we just pick up from the rack, cart it and pay off, with out as much as going through each pack ( as I did today)I am writing this to apprise my fellow residents about the callous attitude and inventory mismanagement of this Nilgiri shop; and wish to caution them to check every pack they buy from there, thoroughly to see that they are not expired.
Unfortunately, we do not have a redressal mechanism in our country (consumer forums are a pain) and they get away with all these. A community awareness like this is the only way out. I also request you to forward this mail to persons whom you are concerned about and buy from Nilgiri.