Balu Shastri

This is a long over due; I agree with R L and Deep.
I hired him for performing rituals since my husband passed away in 2009.
He demanded a lot of money every single day
I was in an emotional state and didn’t think about anything else then.
He has retriver dogs at home! He is that rich; has a house in Los Altos.
I wish he didn’t torture people for money!
Wish priests weren’t this greedy!

We paid him $ 1000 to perform our wedding for us and he conned another 200 from my father saying he had to «feed brahmins» which means that he had to feed himself and buy another BMW as far as I can tell. Don’t hire him!

We had hired Balu Shastri for Grihapravesham at our place. On the day of the function he was in a tearing hurry. He was (almost) yelling and rushing everyone to do various things to finish the pooja as soon as possible. Turns out he had scheduled another grihapravesham and a seemandham on the same day. Make sure you dont call him on an auspicious time thats common to a lot of people.
He also took more money than what was discussed — its very hard to say no when he asks in the middle of the pooja. A couple of my friends who hired him also confirmed the same.

O I totally agree with karthik s feedback above. Baku shastri is one of the worst priests you will ever come across. He is only after one thing. Money money and only money!, he came to do our grihapravesham n god he kept asking for dakshina every now n then n eventually ended up charging us 500bucks in total apart from all of the big packet of cashews elaichi and other five diff variety of nuts to take home… also FYI he is one rich guy with 3mill$ home… isn’t that shocking??? He even skipped so many mantra chanting as he was in hurry to collect money n rush back home. My aunts asked him to say those mantras that he intended to skip… please don’t trust this fellow.

We have had a very bad experience and we have not yet had a ceremony!!! We have been looking for a priest to conduct our wedding ceremony for a few weeks now. When we spoke to Mr. Balu Shastri we were told that he is unable/​unwilling to discuss terms and money for ceremonies such as ours over the phone. He requested that we visit him at his home instead. We drove down and the terms he laid out before us were too far outside of our budget. We thanked him and left, letting him know that we would need some time to discuss this first before confirming him as the priest.
Mr. Balu Shastri contacted each of us numerous times over the next few days as we tried to decide. We wanted to make a decision first about venue and then contact priests/​temples to make our final decision before contacting him to confirm/​or not.
Here is what happened that makes his rating so low when I called him back 3 days later to let him know that we would not be using his services:
1. He assumed that we had committed to him, even though we made sure to not state anything of that sort, and told him that we would get back to him about our decision.
2. He said that in the near future we would return to him, asking forgiveness and ask for him to perform a pooja to correct our mistake. Saying as much as that if we don’t use him that things would go wrong for us and then we would need to return to him to have him correct the error by performing another pooja.
3. He said that I would not be able to sleep at night because of this.
4. He also seemed to have an issue with my fiancée and said that because when she answered the phone she spoke to him only in English, she could not be a Brahmin. And he said that in an accusing manner. (I’ve no idea what his problem was!)
5. He told us that since he is able to perform weddings and is able to sign the wedding license and that if we were to divorce we would need proof that the marriage took place. Again implying that we were going to divorce (even before the wedding took place) and that he was the only one that could save us.
Here is what we believe: He thinks we picked another priest, even though we haven’t.
At this point I can’t imagine having someone like this perform our wedding. From the look of the other reviews, others have also had bad experiences with him. This mean spirited behavior, unprofessional attitude and ungracious character won’t spoil our wedding and we hope he doesn’t spoil your rituals either.
We were saved and can only offer our experience to those who might come to his page to read a review. Please just save yourself some time, money and headache (and not get cursed!).