I made the mistake of ordering a pair of shoes from this Site – The Farcical Big Shoe Bazaar.
First of all, the claim of the Site about large number of pairs of shoes available is a big lie. They have nothing. You order one shoe and there is a 90 percent chance that they will not have it. Then they will make all kinds of excuses. Send you lengthy emails to tell you why the shoe that you ordered was not available. And when you believe them and order another shoe, the same story gets repeated.
They display prices in Indian Rupees. But when you pay through a Credit Card, you get charged in British Pounds. This is the only god forsaken Indian Website that does not have a tie up with an Indian payment gateway. You are routed to a foreign payment gateway and without any warning or information, the payment gets made in British Pounds. The problem is, a shoe worth Rs. 949/- costs you Rs. 988/- after conversion. And when the Site is not able to deliver the shoe(in 90 per cent of the cases), you get a refund of Rs. 928/- only. Its actually a scam. They take your order, then fail to deliver it and when you get a refund, you have already lost about Rs. 60/-.
Not to mention getting a refund is another ordeal. You will have to make about 500 telephone calls, 1000 emails(and none will be acknowledged) and countless chat sessions. The Website’s employee chatting with you will just disappear the moment you type the word – Refund.
After having gone through all the above ordeal to get a refund for my credit card payment, For the second order I paid through online banking. And the Site managed to send me a shoe which had a different design and a lower price. The price difference of Rs. 180/- is yet to be refunded to me. During the last month, I have done my 500 telephone calls, 1000 emails(and none were acknowledged) and countless chat sessions, I am finally fed up and have decided to forget about the refund knowing that it will never come.
But you don’t have to make the same mistake. The people running this web site are a bunch of thugs who make their living by cheating unsuspecting shoppers. My advice to you is buy shoes or don’t buy shoes, avoid this website like the Plague. You will do yourself a lot of good.
Update: June 20, 2008: I am shocked to see 5 fraudulently created positive reviews for bigshoebazaar today. These thugs at bigshoethugsdotcom should be arrested and jailed for life.