I have online account with almost all the online shopping websites for Buying, For deals of the day, for recharging Mobile, for discount coupon, for free samples, for buying cakes and so on.
So far my experience with the online store have been generally good, until now with Tradus where I was unfortunate to receive a defective product and had to return it back. the cost of returning the product was more than the cost of the product itself. However, they have communicated to refund the charges in form of voucher(still waiting for their further response though).
Here are my experience in some of the fields related to online shopping.
- Price of the product
What I have observed that in terms of price there are certain sites which quote higher price for the same type of product. For instance, you will get Softel Juicer Sr around Rs 2000 at tradus and its own website but it is around Rs 1300 at Pepperfry. as far as price is concern you need to really need to browse and google and if possible should have idea about fair market value of the product. Generally you will find that the prices(even after discounts) are more or less in sync with prevailing Mkt price.
- Product
As per my experience, apart from the above scenario all the product delivered were as per the specification. However I have seen/ checked on site that lot of people get defective/ second hand/ other then what they ordered product. There are certain sites like e-bay where you rate the seller and buyer which helps the buyer /seller to check the authenticity of the seller and buyer and their ratings. Since most of the online websites are merely marketing entities, they should provide ratings base on different parameters such as product, delivery timeline, after sales service and so on.
- Delivery of the product
I have experienced both delay in delivery and receipt on or before agreed timeline. But generally I have received the product on or before agreed timeline. Normally, the Vendor provide shipping details/ status on timely basis. However you will find that products are not delivered to the buyer. This may be due to negligence from the manufacture/ marketing firm. But percentage of delivered to non delivered product is not known to anybody. So it wont be fair to comment too negatively on this aspect.
- After sale service
Well I am following up from last week with tradus for my issue. will comment about the same only after some time. Generally after sale service is found to be very bad in case of online shopping.
I firmly believe that while shoping online people should stay away from expensive items including electronic items, furnitures and so on. You should have price range above which you should not shop onine. Read the reviews online before trusting any site and hope for the best and be prepared and plan for the worst.
Wish you a happy and lucky online shopping.