Caveat Emptor!!

Those of us who have developed the virtuous and well-honed habit of reading multiple newspapers for at least two hours daily (yes, this presupposes that you are either fashionably semi-retired or pathetically over-the-top-retired!), might have recently seen a report screaming out to the filthy rich that a Greek island was for sale.  In terms of moolah, one required a measly sum of  USD6MM to own that piece of real estate.  But being part of a decidedly dishonest environment in which the same parcel of land is earnestly sold multiple times to many gullible investors, with the connivance of government officials, this author felt one had to be of really solid timbre, besides rolling in money, to go after such genuinely distant dreams.  Such an investor cannot ignore the wise Latin dictum `Caveat Emptor', which simply means `Let the buyer beware'.   All through the ages, this principle has been avidly held up by the wise men of the society as the essential bedrock of all commercial transactions; but men and women have willfully ignored this splendid, sage-like advice, to the utter detriment of their own treasury balances.

This scribe first came abreast of the above term, loaded with wisdom distilled from the experience of  ancestors ruthlessly conned for centuries,  during a Mercantile Law class, as part of the Cost Accountancy course.  The professor with palpably far-leftist leanings began with the mistaken assumption that a seller was always economically better placed than the buyer and  bellowed that anyone who had something to sell, had a clear agenda without even a pretend-veil, to cheat potential buyers.  The logic was and is impeccable - the seller knows a lot more about the item on the block than the buyer and unless the latter exercises extreme caution, this dangerous mismatch in knowledge is bound to result in the buyer getting burnt somewhere in the bargain.  This precept is incontrovertible generally, but people tend to swat it aside because they have neither the patience to look carefully nor the ability to digest the truth.  Until one is taken for a huge ride resulting in a significant dent in his or her finances.

Recently a friend went to Mangalore and had booked a room with a well known budget hotel chain for two nights, paying in advance with his credit card.  It looked like half the eligible bachelors in that place were getting forcibly engaged during those two days while the other half were getting hitched after the satisfactory waiting period.  There was a huge influx of good men and women who were hell-bent on being part of the above festivities, rendering all types of hotel rooms mighty scarce.  Into this reveller-infested city,  rode the aforesaid friend and rightfully demanded the reserved room at the hotel, while many lesser individuals without such a reservation were hanging out at the Reception, desperately praying for a miracle.  After the room-boy had ushered the visitor into the rather modest lodging and made a big show of switching on the TV and the AC, he collected a tip and left in a hurry as if a few more seconds there would have cost him an arm and a leg.  The friend did not have to wait very long to discover why.  The AC showed 29 deg Celsius and stubbornly refused to budge from there even after half an hour, that `cooling' period he had generously given the machine to do its job.  It would have been an interminable wait for any cooling because the AC was dispensing only hot air - there was no gas in the compressor.  Visits by two technicians and a manager to cajole the machine to relent did not yield any result.  Anyway, the perceptive friend had concluded that the hotel staff were just playing dumb-charade with him, being fully aware of the fact that the AC had no gas.  By this time, it was midnight and the room, without any other form of air circulation or any opening on the walls, had started resembling a cauldron.  All that the expletive-laced rants of the friend could elicit from the staff was an assurance that they would change the room the next day.  They did and the second night in the hotel was a breeze, literally.  When the friend returned to base, he furiously wrote a complaint to the hotel, asking for refund of one night's charges and is still waiting for a response.  That he asked his bank to block the payment to the hotel on his card and the bank demanded to know if he had anything in writing to show that the hotel said they would give an AC room is another matter.  None of us checks that kind of stuff on the booking confirmation, do we??

A family friend of ours recently went to a well known diamond jewellery shop to do valuation of her solitaires and was blithely told that they do not evaluate diamonds bought from another source.  It sounds pretty innocuous at first and this friend realized the diabolical game being played only after she got the same answer from four other shops.  That meant she had to go back to the jeweller who sold the solitaires to her and how do you think they would value what they sold?  So, unless one knows a jeweller personally, it is difficult to get such a valuation done and all jewellers live happily ever after, having sold at their own price to their unsuspecting clients.  And the generally accepted practice of a second opinion always showing a lower value, if one can get such a valuation, goes a long way in keeping the original sellers warm and glowing!

This is the story of a body-slimming vest someone bought online in the US.  Advertisement spiel had it that if one used the tight vest daily for four hours or so, weight loss would happen and the body will slim down.  After a month of diligent adherence to the instructions in the manual that came with the purchase and going around in the vest, with the extremely uncomfortable feeling that the body was being tightly squeezed from all directions, there was no evidence of any real loss of weight or slimming of the body.  However, the owner was so seriously bothered by the odour that started emanating from the vest, he decided to put it through the rigours of the washing machine - just once.  Lo and behold, when it came out washed, the vest had shrunk to half its size and could no longer be forced down the torso of even a child!!  May be that is what the seller meant - there is no guarantee that the body would slim but the vest definitely would, after one wash!!

Recently in Bangalore, the Development Authority, the government agency in charge of allotting land for building residential and commercial spaces, decreed that some 100 houses built on a piece of land have to be demolished.  Why?  Because the houses were illegally built on a dry lake bed.  Fair enough, serves people right if they encroached on a lake bed, falling into the trap laid by avaricious private builders, who had no right to that land to begin with - people thought as they read the news item.  They even nodded in appreciation that some government agency was finally doing its job.  But they were rendered speechless when they found out that the land was sold to the house owners by the same Development Agency twenty years back!!

When I discussed this subject for the blog with my dear wife, she wholeheartedly and readily agreed.  What bothered me was the quizzical look she had in her eyes - as if she wished someone had drawn her attention to the tenet of Caveat Emptor some 32 years ago when she thought she was making the most important 'bargain' purchase of her life!!