Wednesday, November 5, 2008

How Loan recovery agents impact tourism

Well you must be surprised, that how recovery agents are impacting tourism industry. But it really impacts and as drops of water make ocean same thing one bad incident getting over hyped will create a problem for booming travel industry in India. This is a fact which has always gets condemnation from all corner of govt but still these loan recovery agents recruited by financial institution are really a matter of concerns. Generally these agents are kinds of goons whose sole motive is to earn money.
There is an incident happened with me which is so much horrified that I would think twice before renting any vehicles from any travel agency. Recently I had been to Orissa and decided to visit some tourist places. Hence I rented one vehicle from local travel agent. My whole family and my sis family were together, hence we rented an Innova.
We were in our way to tourist place called Kapilas(A famous holly place in the bank of river Mahanadi in central orissa. This place is famous for Lord Shiv and situated around 2000 feet above sea level. This is also a famous summer retreat camp). Anyway in the way, we were near to a city called cuttack and suddenly three people in a bike stopped the vehicle. We thought them kind of thief or anti-social people. I really got scared as I was with family. One of these three, took over the driver seat and told us that they are loan recovery agents from a private financial institution called Magna finance and as the owner of the vehicle has not paid EMI from last five months, hence magna finance has recruited them to take the vehicle and force the owner to pay the EMI.
Then these rowdy looking agents started driving the vehicle towards Bhubaneswar and told us that after some formalities, they will release the vehicle. I was really scared at this moment, because we are getting late, my niece was sick and Kapilas was situated in a dense forest.

I started arguing with them and told them that they cannot simply put the tourists in trouble and asked them to show their ID card. One of them shown me an ID card which was already expired in 2008, Jan. My bro-in-law asked them where is the valid ID card and the agent told that it is in file.
I have taken the snap of that ID card using my iPhone. After lots of argument with these agents, finally the agent who was driving the car, arranged another innova for us. And finally we could able to go kapilas with a new vehicle.

This was really a nightmare for me and I will never ever again hire a cabin orissa. Just wanted to share with all of you. Be careful before hiring any cab, who knows the owner of cab might have bought the cab using loan and in the middle of journey a loan recovery agent will bug you.

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