[Resolved]  Anju Placement Agency — Maid - Racket- What to Do If You Get Snared In An Agency's Trap?

Hi,
Gurgaon being Gurgaon and the nature of the working class- There is a huge demand for Maids, here is where the Agencies who supply maids step in. These Agencies are present across the whole belt of NCR. Their modus operandi is simple. You give them your requirements and they get you a maid and charge you anything between 5, 000 to 10, 000 as commission. Many also demand for the maids 1 month salary as advance.

One needs to be very careful with these agencies, or one can easily burn ones fingers and also burn a hole in the pocket.

I had a bad experience with Anju Placement Agency, hope you take a leaf out of my experience and do not make the mistake of dealing with this agency. Was introduced to me by sheer chance, one of my friends had got a maid from this agency. I did all the procedures paid commission and 1 month maids salary to them. We were promised that in any case the maid leaves us, we would be provided with a replacement within a week. However any time the maid leaves the house, we needed to inform the Agency. With this we were given a maid on 2nd February '08 and all was fine till 11th July'08

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On 11th July'08 we needed to leave for a vacation for a week and the maid decided that she would also take a break for a week. Hence we help the maid to book her ticket and informed the agency accordingly. On the date of departure we called the agency again and informed them.
After we came back from our vacation, our maid did not turn up. We called the agency and informed them. They asked us to wait for a week and then would provide us a replacement. A week passed, we were asked to wait for few more days. Few more days passed, no sign of any maid. Numerous calls and follow-up from my end-- now led to more promises and in August, they Agency sent a maid to my house who was not only Un Trained (against my requirement of Fully trained), she also did not understand Hindi. She spoke only Bengali and we at home speak Hindi, English, Tamil or Malayalam. I immediately understood that the agency was trying to clearly hook me up with an untrained maid. Hence I threatened them to go to Police with my complaint, Ms Anju called me and pacified me by apologizing to me and assured me that she would send me a fully trained maid max by 19th August. I trusted her, as she is the owner of the Agency. But trust is a word which should not be used in relation to this Agency.

Post 19th August'08 I called her number [protected] (10-12 times) to speak to another set of people - Anil, Mahendra and Mishra (who said he was her husband). I was again promised by Mishra that I would have a refund cheque in hand on 26th of August'08

Today is 6th October'08 I have totally made more than 100 calls to the agency spoken to Rajesh, Rahul, Anil, Anju, Mishra, Mahendra etc. They promised that they would provide me a maid within a week, within a day, within 2 days, within a week . .all promises broken and they are not showing any signs of refunding any amount paid to them (Commission paid 7000+ 3500 salary advance). I do not expect the full commission, however as they could not provide a maid even after a month- the agency needs to refund the 3500 salary advance and commission (after deducting pro rata commission for 5 months). The last discussion I had with Rajesh from the Agency- was that they will send the cheque ASAP.

I intend to file a police complaint and want to also take this up in the consumer court. Need some guidance on how to go about this.