Five years later - a lot to thank and appreciate.....

29th September 2008 - today was the day the US stock market had one more miserable Monday but it is also the 5 year anniversary when we moved into our current home and on this day I have a lot to appreciate and be thankful for.....Honey - this is for you!

Economy here in the US has been slowly sliding down the tube and like most housing markets around the country, values of homes in our neck of the woods have fallen a good bit. In spite of all that - because the timing of us moving into this house of ours was fortuitous thankfully this house we call home has appreciated decently since we bought.

On this 5th anniversary of this house, I have to mention how it all started. It was a winter evening in early 2001 and dear wife (DW) was visiting a family friends of ours. They had just moved into their first house. DW and they happened to embark on discussions about merits of buying a house and DW being a savvy woman that she is, collected all the information needed and promplty informed me about it. Not being as savvy and a bit shall we say....lazy.... I shrugged off her enthusiasm. Why bother with all that I said - we are so happy in our apartment.

But a wise woman that she is - she persisted and insisted that we at least meet the realtor these friends of ours referred to us. We did and he explained us the virtues of owning a house and bluntly told us we should stick to a house we can afford to pay unlike some borrowers he had seen. Thus began our house hunting and we closed on our first house - a townhome in May 2001.
Two years later we were already seeing fruits of DW's wisdom in form of rising home value. Then we began looking for a detached house. Most in the neighborhoods we were looking at were priced higher that what we wanted to fork out. DW (did I say she was wise, savvy and persistent???) kept looking at the listings as I kept saying (now with the benefit of hindsight - it clearly seems stupid) she was just being paranoid.....

Suddenly one of the houses that we were looking at suddenly listed just within our budget. We scrambled, looked at the house several times and put up an offer and luckily - in the days of crazy markets elsewhere in the area - thankfully our's was accepted with only minor negotiations.

And thus five years ago we closed on this house of ours we now call home.

So this post is for you Honey..... had you not persisted and gotten us started on this journey or succumbed to my laziness - we would not be where we are today !!! You go girl......!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reliance Mutual Funds - Forget about a good online user experience!!!

I am back after a long hiatus (which was mostly out of laziness and nothing else.....)

We Indians proudly proclaim our country to be a leader in information and technology. I have used online transaction services of several companies – both, in India and outside of India. I have to confess that the best online experience of an India-based company has been mediocre and that is being quite generous. Today, I will lay out in front of you my experience with Indian Mutual Fund giant Reliance Mutual Funds.

I have two different folio numbers for purchases made on separate occasions. Having received PIN numbers from Reliance Mutual, I used that to register myself and get a user ID. So far so good. Then I tried to map my other folio to the same user id and what should indeed have been a simple step turned into a nightmare. The online system accepted my PIN number and I proceeded to the next screen. After clicking through and accepting the terms and conditions, the system wanted me to change my PIN. I enter the same PIN again (remember – the system had already accepted this once) and enter the new PIN of my choice and click OK and guess what… the system says the PIN is incorrect. Now how is a PIN correct in one place and the same one in the same user session incorrect on the next page?

Several email messages to the customer service about this problem virtually go unanswered. The after about a week, I get an email from a customer service lady of Reliance Mutual Fund but this is a form letter which had zero relevance to my original complaint. Several attempts after this have gone unanswered.

Fed up with this, I finally decide to bite the bullet and set up another user id for the second folio number I have and have no problem setting up the same with the SAME freakin…PIN numbers. I take a deep breath and say OK – at least I got this working and since this folio also has my PAN details, I naively think that I can now do online transactions. I click my way merrily through various screens, select the scheme (where by the way – the list has error – one scheme name is repeated exactly same and has different NAVs – which does not make sense – I am guessing one of those names should be Dividend and other should be Growth – but I guess it is too much to ask for clarity and consistency – but I digress) and as soon as I click to submit my transaction – I get a cryptic message saying “Username cannot be found”.

I am at a complete loss now since I am logged in and doing the transaction through my account – how can a user name not exist?

As usual, my several emails to customer service have gone unanswered. If any of you savvy readers have had similar problems and have been able to get it resolved – please send me a message as to how you did it. I have tried to reach various officials at Reliance (including branch and service center chiefs in Pune and even head of IT for Reliance Mutual Fund) but so far all my efforts have come to a complete naught.

Some of my other observations about Reliance Mutual Fund online access application are:
- Poor user interface
- Very cryptic and unfriendly messages
- Mostly non-existent customer service
- Inability to send message to change any personal information details like bank account number.

If this is the state if affairs with the largest mutual fund company in India, it is hard to imagine what others in the mutual funds business have to offer.

And as I said earlier, by no means is Reliance MF the only one guilty in providing poor online user experience. Most big names will compete fiercely for that distinction. And I personally think, we as the consumers are equally guilty in accepting the poor service offering these companies put in front of us.