Here Is How You Are Being Cheated Every Day. Do Something About It.

We are being cheated every day. In ways we CAN imagine. They are not professional con artists from Oceans Eleven. They are regular people who think everyone else is stupid. And they do it in broad daylight with a smug smile on their faces.

And just because I mentioned the following professions, it doesn’t mean that the whole category is tainted. There will always be honest workers. But that’s the sad part. Some time ago, a dishonest person was a rarity. Now, an honest person is the endangered species.

1. Petrol Pumps

Ask anyone with a vehicle about petrol pumps and you will get an angry rant about their experience where they were swindled out of a significant amount of money. While many of their tricks are well known, some tricks are still employed unknowingly. Some of the usual tricks like a faulty meter and the attendant distracting you while he pumps less fuel into your vehicle are well-known one of the lesser-known trick is –

There is a locking mechanism of the release valve on their dispensers. You may have noticed some of them locking it while some just pump manually. When they pump manually, they have the experience and the expertise to control the valve in such a way that air is pumped in along with the petrol. This way the display will show that you got the fuel you requested, but some of it never reaches your tank.

ALWAYS TELL THEM TO LOCK THE RELEASE VALVE ON THE DISPENSER.

 

2. Milk

Yes, we all have heard of adulteration and all that jazz and have we just given up? Milk, unlike other adulterated food items like turmeric, is consumed by litres in households everywhere. Your milk is adulterated with paint and detergent and milk powder. And not to mention water. Lots and lots of water.

And most of the packaged milk is so lean and diluted, it is impossible to get cream out of it. Most of the cream is weaned out of the milk and is sold as a different product. And the full-cream variety of milk is expensive. Smart.

 

3. Grocers

Your nearest Kirana store is fooling you – every day. Well, maybe not, but there are high chances. The most common way they fool you is by using tampered electronic weight measurement systems.

In a TOI report that took Chennai as a reference city, they found that 10,168 stores cheated their customers. The report says the customers are cheated up to 300 grams per kilo in some cases. And these are only the reported numbers of one major city.

How many grocery stores are swindling their customers in the smaller towns without getting caught?

 

4. Juices

You are basically drinking in a lot of sugar that is disguised as “fruit”. Fruits, when eaten contain a lot of fiber and vitamins in the “unwanted” parts – the peel and the skin. But we don’t want to eat that! In this age of convenience and laziness – which the juice manufacturers are capitalizing on – we want to snack as easy and as fast as possible.

We do not have the time to make healthy snacks or to cut up a fruit and eat it. We go for a “healthy snack” – juice!

Even most of the “100% real juice” varieties have less nutrients in them. In India, we don’t really have any mechanism to verify their claims that the juices are actually healthy. But going through the countless nutritionists on the websites and television and books state that packaged juices are not nutritious.

And, from all the advertisements saying that they are and us drinking them – yes we are getting cheated – every day.

 

5. Apples/Mangoes/Bananas/fruits in general

We all have heard about the “wax on the apples to make them look good” story. Yes, It’s a way vendors cheat people by making the fruit appear very appealing and attractive. But under that waxed skin, the fruit isn’t necessarily full of nutrients.

Most of the fruits in the market are artificially ripened. Artificial ripening means that the fruit did NOT have enough time to build the nutrients you could have absorbed if the fruit had been normal. The problem is so rampant the FSSAI has a PDF file with all the information and the harmful effects of artificial ripening. And just like milk, fruits are consumed every day, we give them to our kids to eat so that they grow to be healthy and strong. And we get cheated every day in the name of nutrition.

 

6. Rickshaws

It is late night and you don’t see a lot of rickshaws plying, and you hail one and he asks you the regular fare PLUS the extra money because he cannot get any fare back from the place he is dropping you. First thing – you do NOT have to pay him the extra. You can refuse it. On legal grounds and on logical grounds. The logical being that the fare they calculate and have on their fare cards is the amount of money that is ENOUGH for them to drop you to the place you want to go to AND THEN GET BACK.

Rickshawalas are not stupid to make a fare chart to just get to the destination and then rely on the chance that they might get a fare from that place to get back to their rickshaw stand.

Also, there is the issue of tampered meters. But now they have been told to switch to digital ones, hence the rampant demands for that “EXTRA” charge because they cannot get their poor return fare.

 

7. Beggars

I don’t even know where to start here. When I moved to the city I saw these beggars everywhere, and I genuinely thought they were poor and the whole city has a rampant problem of poverty. I was right about poverty, but the truth about beggars only came out when I read about the beggar mafia and how they make a lot of money doing nothing other than controlling a few kids to gain sympathy.

And because all Indians are attuned to the problem of poverty and many have faced adversity in their lives, take part in the charity – which is good.

But the money is not going to the beggar at all. It is snatched away from his hands by a handler right around the corner.

I do not find all these instances appalling at all. It’s human nature to cheat and make money off each other’s dead bodies. What really surprises me is that in this age of  Internet and awareness, where I am sure most of YOU readers know about all the above tactics don’t do anything.

Why?

Because of inconvenience.

• We do not want to make a scene at the petrol pump because you probably will be late for work. 
• You do not want to go to courts every week to follow up on the consumer complaint you made. 
• You want to reach that place and there’s no other rickshaw in sight.  
• An unripe fruit is probably still better than no fruit, right?

What can we really do? If we fight, we are called an AAPtard, even though you hate that party. If we sit back, our conscience doesn’t let us rest. Then there is anger and frustration about this country which eventually leads to hate and if the circumstance allows – an exodus – seeking greener pastures.

Why don’t you make a scene at that petrol pump? With the rickshawala? Why don’t you make all the rounds to the consumer court, get off your frustrated ass and do it.

It’s your money, your own personal money. It’s not like people are damaging public property and you ignore it. That’s your money too, but baby steps for now.

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