Of This and That

Along with purchase of new cars, Govt has made it mandatory to issue FASTag sticker. The idea is to shift more and more people to use these automatic toll payment tags, then having to wait in long queues on the highways. All that is fine, but if only things work so smoothly 😏. When a buy a new car, the dealer goes ahead and registers it with FASTag. In my case it was ICICI FASTag. While it is the vehicle registration number that should be fed in their system, but since the new car hasn't yet been to RTO for passing and registration, it hasn't got the registration number. So the dealer, instead, uses the VIN/Chassis no. It is then my (owner's) responsibility to get this updated. So I logged into the ICICI FASTag system and logged a service request asking for vehicle number updation. For many days, nothing happened. About 2 weeks later someone from the call center called and said that I need to login again, raise a new service request, specifically for the vehicle numbe...

For many years I am doing most of my banking with ICICI and have hardly visited the branch in the last decade or so. Almost all the banking needs are managed online or via the relationship manager. I do have to have to visit SBI once a year to deposit some money in my PPF account. While this is just a once a year task, I was still not keen on making even this 1 day visit to SBI and hence thought to transfer the PPF account to ICICI, which is also a government recognized back to hold PPF accounts.  After multiple attempts, but something or other kept coming up, I finally managed to visit the SBI bank one fine Saturday morning. This was the fist mistake. The bank gets unduly crowded on weekends. I reached the bank by 10.15 am or so.  As I entered the bank, there was a queue with about 5-6 people standing at the "May I Help You" counter. Knowing that this will take a while, I approached the security guard, who is seen more within the bank and less at the entrance gate. He t...