Gati Kwe — Non disclosure of full charges & harassment

My complaint is about Gati taking my business without disclosing full costs. With additional costs, my decision to send freight now does not make business sense. Here are the details: 1. I wanted to send two TV sets 32 inches & 46 inches from Vaishali, Ghaziabad to Wadala, Mumbai. I spoke at the call centre where the representative told me the approximate cost of sending one TV would be Rs.500-700. Based on this information, I went ahead and made a booking for pick up. 2. A Gati Noida representative (Mr. Vijayendra, Gati Noida – [protected]) arrived at the Ghaziabad location on 13th Feb, and calculated the bill to be Rs. 2996. On my asking how can the charges be so different from information given by the call centre, I was told that call centre only provides freight charges. Mr. Vijayendra claimed to be the expert at TV freight, saying he is clear about the right charges. 3. I confirmed if these charges were all inclusive, because I was evaluating other means of freight (train, etc.) and also other vendors. I was clearly told by Mr. Vijayendra that there would be NO additional charges, and the total Rs. 2996 was for door to door delivery 4. Also, for insurance purposes, I was entering a total value of Rs30, 000 for the two used TV sets. Mr. Vijayendra asked me to enter value that would represent what I would want to claim in case of damage, and hence I entered market value of new sets (Rs. 72, 000) 5. On 17th the delivery men came to deliver & produced a bill for additional Rs. 4182 as Octroi charges. I called the Gati NOIDA representative and asked for clarification. It was clear that he was himself not aware of Octroi charges, and he agreed that he had not passed on complete information to help me make the right decision. 6. Gati Noida should have taken the blame for keeping customer in the dark and should have offered to bear additional charges. However, Gati Noida was not able to resolve the problem with the delivery representative, who was demanding to be paid before parting with the freight items. 7. When I pushed to resolve the situation, Mr. Vijayendra started trying to save his face by now saying that "I should be aware of these charges" & that "he was only talking about Gati freight". NOW THE MAIN PROBLEM IS THIS: Gati should have told me that there would be additional charges based on Octroi. I would have then considered other means of freight and would not have done business with Gati. I would also have declared the true depreciated value of freight, where I was clearly misled to quote market value. This is blatant breach of consumer trust. Despite repeated questions the Gati representative didn't give entire information during booking and later denied any responsibility of this error. I am not averse to paying Octroi, but this information should have been given to me by Gati, a freight company that should be aware of these rules and therefore is expected to pass along this info to the consumer. Gati's lack of information can't be used to hold consumer on ransom. The delivery men threatened to lodge police complain against me because I didn't given in to their demand & also refused to let them take the TV. As a consumer, I am appalled that I was repeatedly threatened inside my own house when the true reason is lack of competency of your staff. It is shameful that your organization uses such cheap ways to wrestle out of incompetence to win business from a consumer. I hope there is some action against these people at Gati Noida. I plan to take this complain to as many consumer forums as possible.