Customer is king (or queen). And every single person is a customer. Even the seller is a customer, except in his own business.
A young couple, Mr. Arav Tiwari and his wife, visited us with a sample of granite and their kadiya’s notes. Here’s a pic of kadiya’s notes:
What do you notice, right from the words at the top to measurements till the bottom?
Basis these notes and a granite sample brought by the Tiwaris, a conversation took place to understand the requirements; Mr. Tiwari’s wife took greater lead in the conversation.
Mr. G S Soni, my father, made an estimate of the total basis the requirements. Here’s a pic of that estimate:
In both the above pieces of paper, notice the words CHOKDI PATHAR. It’s a trade name for Kota Stone which all the people, who deal with masonry and stone-related work, understand and use in their every day language.
There was a discussion related to Granite to be used as Service Counter Top. Granite named Z Brown Red was finalized for this purpose.
Notice that the price for Chokdi Pathar is lower. And that for granite is higher.
A full advance payment of Rs. 3500, against an estimate of Rs. 3561, was made towards the order.
Below is the delivery slip when the order was dispatched:
Upon receiving the material, Mr. Tiwari’s wife got upset seeing CHOKDI PATHAR (Kota Stone). A conversation ensured and my father offered to replace the CHOKDI PATHAR with some other stone or granite as preferred. Mr. Tiwari’s wife wrote nasty things on Whatsapp and left a nasty feedback too on Google. Screenshot below:
Low quality? I’ve written about assessment of quality in other posts. Trying to make sense of quality once again.
Firstly, Mr. Tiwari’s wife can’t claim ‘low quality’. Quality in stone is not related to the prices of the stone.
Chokdi Pathar and Granite are two different things. Just because the price of granite is higher doesn’t mean that it is superior to Kota Stone, that is also called Chokdi Pathar in such contexts.
In fact if one goes about carefully observing the use of natural stone, granite looks worse than Kota Stone in so so many cases. Architects have fancied and used Kota Stone more beautifully than granite, more often than not. But of course, that depends on person to person and design to design.
Italian Stone, in terms of quality, often fails in Indian conditions, even though it looks beautiful, and carries a huge huge price.
Typically, going by how construction-related work happens, and the language used in that work, granite isn’t called and used as Chokdi Pathar. It is always Kota Stone.
In case one uses granite as Chokdi Pathar, one needs to specify and write that explicitly. And pay the price accordingly since granite is priced higher.
One may also have to look at the thickness of the granite slab in case it is used at a spot where some heavy duty work happens. Greater the thickness, greater the price.
Construction-related execution, or any subject that is relatively new for us, demands a careful look at the details.
What does one do in such cases? How should one treat such customer-queens and kings?
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