Troubled times

How times have changed! Earlier, resellers were looked upon as a community which was used to committing acts of omissions against others. Now, the same community is complaining of frauds, cheque bouncing, fly-by-night operators etc. Nehru Place, the capital's IT hub is currently in the grip of a series of these kinds of troubles and more. In fact, it won't be an exaggeration to say that they are going through troubled times.

Perhaps the biggest trouble, which is haunting them, is the specter of frauds, which seems to be happening with alarming regularity. Almost every month one gets to hear about some reseller or the other getting duped. More often than not, the perpetrator manages to slip away. Now, resellers, who in any case operate on very razor thin margins, getting duped comes as a last straw. This results in them becoming extra careful when dealing with customers, which in principle is right, but at times unnecessarily unnerves the customer.

Another problem, which is becoming a big headache for the resellers is the issue of bouncing cheques. An increasing number of cheques are bouncing which creates a lot of liquidity problem for them. Then there is the problem of fly-by-night operators who buy products from them on credit and simply vanish overnight into thin air.

Is there a solution to these problems? Yes, there is, but for that the resellers will have to change their method of working which would be somewhat difficult for them. They are used to working in a very unorganized manner, with most of the transactions happening by word of mouth or on small chits of paper. This means that whenever there is some problem, they cannot even lodge a complaint which results in losses for them.

On top of that, they don't have the habit of accepting credit cards, which would mean secure transactions for the buyer as well as seller. A very miniscule minority of resellers in Delhi accepts credit cards. Their reason for non-acceptance is that they cannot afford the service charges of the credit card companies because of very thin margins. If these resellers start accepting credit cards, most of their troubles would be over.

Here the association of resellers would have to play a major role in terms of educating its members about the benefits of accepting credit cards. The association can also make a checklist of things to look for when accepting cheques and demand drafts. All this and more can be done. But will they?