I feel sad writing this letter when the association is with a relatively good Indian citizen.
I applied for this offer by Reliance Infocom Ltd. in response to their advertisement in The Times of India on 9th, January 2003. My cheque for Rs.10, 000/- was debited to my a/c on 18th January 2003. Between 28th January & 7th February I rang up their Vashi office & spoke a number of times to their help desk for the DAE programme. Since they could not answer any question or doubt about the selection & training procedure satisfactorily I decided & communicated by email on 7th January 2003 to their customer care department that I wished to withdraw my candidature from the DAE program & therefore as per the terms of their advertisement they should refund my application deposit immediately.
On 8th morning I received a call from their representative that they had selected me for the DAE programme. I apprised him of my decision & he instructed me to send him a copy of my email to his personal address so that he could expedite my refund. Four days later as a matter of precaution I called him to check the progress & I was utterly flabbergasted to hear that I needed to send a signed letter stating that I wished to withdraw and even after that he said it would take 4-6 weeks to get the refund as it was the policy of the company. He gave me an address without any name of person concerned and even without a PIN code & said I should just address the letter to Reliance Infocom Ltd. Fortunately the courier has delivered my letter to Reliance Industries Ltd.
Unfortunatelly when I explained the details to a senior Reliance executive - who promised to check - he said a couple of days later that neither he nor the other gentleman could trace my letter and give any information on the progress. And his funny remark was that Reliance had truly become an ocean.
Now I do not know when I will get back my money. However it is clear that no Indian Company should ever be trusted to be given advance payments or deposits.
vsaa