Arrogant accountant?
Someone made a comment about Indian people on my blog a couple of weeks ago:
Indian people are very arrogant and they show it when they talk. Again, this information is based on my interviewing several Indian people and is not based on prejudicial thinking.
I don’t exactly agree with this comment, but I can kind of understand why he feels that way. This is one of problems of India; the vast majority of Indian people are probably good people, but some of those who provide services to foreigners (Americans, British and others) are behaving a bit arrogantly. They can charge high service fees in Indian standard, and given the demand for services provided by Indian working professionals is very high, they do not have to think long term; they can just provide short term services and they can just keep taking new customers. This is why they probably just don’t bother providing quality services.
My guess is that this applies to accounting services also. Many accounts in India provide services to foreigners, and my guess is that the demand for their services is rather high. Also they can easily charge high service fees in Indian standard; this is probably why some of them behave a bit arrogantly. I had a slightly uncomfortable communication with one accountant that I hired last year; I hired a new accountant recently for a couple of reasons, but I still need to communicate with this old accountant occasionally for a couple of reasons.
I received the following email yesterday:
Find herewith the bills as an attachment.
[His assistance name]
It included two invoices, one of which I had never seen:
January 3rd, 2007 Bill No. [Invoice No.]
To,
M/s [My company’s name]
MumbaiKind Attn: Mr. [My name]
Bill
Miscellaneous expenditure under Companies Act, 1956 Rs. 3,000=00
==========
Rs. 3,000 =00
==========(Rupees Three Thousand Only)
Thanking you,
For [Accountant’s company’s name]
[His assistance name]
The invoice doesn’t say anything, so I sent the following email:
Hi [Accountant’s name],
I looked at the invoice No. [Invoice No.], which was originally issued on Jan 3rd, 2007; however, I had not looked at until today because I never received it until today. I have a couple of question.
I only see the description “Miscellaneous expenditure under Companies Act. 1956″ and the fee Rs. 3,000 for that. The description is too vague; frankly speaking, it’s a little unsound. I will make the payment for your professional services, but the payment ought to be made for specific services; there should be good explanations on how those services are provided and reasons why they are priced at whatever prices they have. After all, they are professional services.
Let me just step back and make a comment on the previous invoice No.152/06-07 also. Before I came to India, we exchanged a number of emails, and we agreed that the total fee for your professional services up to the incorporation was USD 1850 (1250 USD for the report + 200 USD for various government fees + 400 USD for the incorporation; this is according to the email that I received from you on May 22nd, 2006) and I already paid USD 1450 before I came to India, so I owned you USD 400. Now, No.152/06-07 charges Rs. 24.693, roughly USD 550, more than what we agreed initially and I was never informed of the reason why you decided to charge more until I received the invoice. However, I will not raise too many questions about this particular invoice at this point. I know that I am making the payment late, and I personally feel that it’s reasonable that I pay you a little more than what we initially agreed. But, even then, the fact of the matter is that I am willing to pay more than what we agreed.
Given the fact that I accept the fee Rs. 24.693, which is more than Rs. 6,700 than what we initially agreed, there has be a very good reason(s) why I am charged Rs. 3,000 on top of that. The short vague description “Miscellaneous expenditure under Companies Act. 1956″ doesn’t quite justify. I’d like to request you to give me more detailed information about the miscellaneous expenditure and a reason(s) why I should be charged Rs. 3,000. If the fee is perfectly justifiable, I will make the payment; otherwise, I would feel a little uncomfortable.
I will make the payment of Rs. 24.693 as soon as possible. I apologize for this once again. While I can only wait for my bank to give me FIRC, I feel very bad for making the payment so late.
Best regards,
[My name]
He replied back and wrote:
Hi [My name],
I appreciate your concern and also feel sorry that you have completely forgotten that we had agreed that certain fees shall be charged towards using my office address as registered office of your company and for lending my name as director of your company.
Since your company is now incorporated, you don’t want to recollect having discussed these matters.
I have categarised it as miscelleneous expenses in my bill because I can not officially charge this money from you for the services provided.
Thanks
[Accountant’s name]
I replied back to this and I wrote:
Hi [Accountant’s name],
> I appreciate your concern and also feel sorry that you have completely forgotten that we had agreed that certain fees shall be charged towards using my office address as registered office of your company and for lending my name as director of your company.
Yes, I do remember this. In fact, you said
> We will allow you to use our office as registered office for a period of two months from the date of incorporation.
on Nov. 17th, 2006. You also said
> [Accountant’s name] …That is not a big fees. It all depends on our relationship. I am a director in many
companies for no charge because they belong to my friends. Therefore we can discuss this later. Any way this will not be a big amount may be in the range of Rs 15,000 per annum.> [Accountant’s name] … Please see answer to q 2. What we can do Director + Registered office, we will charge you…20,000 pa.
on Nov. 18th, 2006.
It’s been three months since the incorporation, so I do owe you Rs. 1,670 or so (Rs. 20,000 / 12), but the invoice itself was issued on Jan. 3rd, 2007 as if it assumed that I would need to lend your office address and your name for a month or two longer than two months; that seems a bit strange.
I am not saying that I will not make the payment of Rs. 3000 in addition to Rs. 24.693, but some things looked a bit ambiguous. Nothing more than that.
> I have categarised it as miscellaneous expenses in my bill because I can not officially charge this money from you for the services provided.
I don’t know … I think that you or your assistance could’ve dropped me an email and told me that what “Miscellaneous expenditure under Companies Act. 1956″ is really about if you could not put it in the invoice officially.
Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on it, nor do I want to spend any more time discussing about this. I will make both payments as soon as possible, hopefully in a day or two. I want to emphasize that I’ve never had any intension to delay payments; I just wanted to make sure that I completed all necessary paperwork.
Please bear with me just for a few more days (hopefully) …
Regards,
[My name]
Then he replied back:
Hi
I neither I intend to drag this issue any more nor I intedn to west time on writing mails to you on such issues but you must understand that every where in life you cant apply the formula of amount/12…if this arrangement was for 1 day… you will say 20000/365 X 1 which is Rs.54/- so you would have paid 54 rupees. Its strange to me that you calculate this way. First I never lend my name and give my office address to any stranger but I did in your case. On the top of it you write such mails. I am very upset and I got a lesson from this. Thanks for that.
You also speak to your consultant about giving name as a director is how dengerous in India.
I am surprised at your calculations [My name].
You can avoide paying the whole amount to me….
Please have long term view from relationship point of view….
[Accountant’s name]
The total service fee charged is over USD 2000, and this is very good money in India; I already paid USD 1450. Given that, I expect the top quality service from this accountant; it is a fair expectation; however, he lacks basic skills. For example, misspellings and grammatical mistakes are all over his emails. We all misspell words and make grammatical mistakes, but he makes too many mistakes, while he ought to provide the top quality service. Also he can’t just charge a fee saying that it’s for “miscellaneous expenditure.” Besides, he’s an accountant after all; he ought to do better than that; he cannot be so ambitious. He is apparently not happy, but his performance hasn’t impressed me.
This is just my side of the story, but I can’t help thinking that the customer service (or the client service) that this accountant provides is not of high quality. Ironic statement is this, “Please have long term view from relationship point of view….”; if he actually believes in creating long term relationships, then he does his best to provide the top quality service. This, I think, is one of bad examples of India and one of examples of “arrogant Indian people.”
