Baazee was started during the great DotCom boom time. I actually worked on some product that Baazee required for itself during the early stages when they had to establish themselves and get firmly set on the Indian mind. A bunch of bright IIT/IIM grads ran a tight ship.
Then they sold their stock, got rich overnight (talk about get-rich quick schemes) and the site has been downhill since.
I used the site to order a few items (swiss army knife for 99/-, bed side lamp, rechargeable torch). Upon delivery, surprise surprise surprise. The products were totally different from what was featured and promised on the site. For ex: the swiss army knife turned out to be inferior product (not even chinese make such inferior products). The bottle opener of the knife actually got bent out of shape. The ’stainless steel’ blade rusted. The finish was so bad, that you would think making these knives was a KG school project and not the output of an industry.
The bed side lamps were badly scratched and had appearence of being used. The rechargeable torch had such batteries that they overheated in no time. The typical running time of the torch was 45 seconds after a 24 hour charge.
I of course complained on the site about the seller. Baazee intervened and said - please resolve with seller but remove -ve rating. Seller said send me the stuff back at your cost and I will replace it (with more crap?). Baazee followed up and said remove the -ve rating, whether your issue was resolved or not.
Is Baazee’s responsibility limited to hosting a server? Isnt it illegal for a Registered firm to operate without a charter that promises to take care of customers? Baazee has ’zero’ control over the sellers.
They don’t have an escrow account for buyer protection. They don’t hold cash deposits from sellers to impose penalties. Buyer/seller identities are not verified. Market price check verification is not done. They don’t hold submitted products for review by Editorial team before unleashing them on the site.
For ex: You will multiple entries for the same item by the same seller. Quite often seller will entice you in with a extremely low value for the product (Re 1/-) and charge the full value as ’shipping’! The quality of the merchandise is never checked and buyers are generally on their own. Buyers even have to pay in advance for the products. The seller can of course disappear with the money or send crap in return. Due to policies of typical Indian banks, you can never dispute an amount or ask for payment reversal. Hell! A corporate bank like ICICI even charges megabucks for Stop Cheque instructions (which ought to be free).
In all, its a jungle out there.