I would like to highlight one of the worst online purchase experiences I have had so far, with my recent purchase on Flipkart. During the entire process, I felt totally cheated by Flipkart.
Flipkart was more than happy to gobble up customer’s hard-earned money, without any second thoughts and didn’t even bother to address the grievance of a customer, who was left with a low-quality product, after paying more than the market price.
I believe Flipkart deliberately mislead me on the product pricing. I’m sure many other customers would have gone through similar experience.
Pulling customer into the trap:
It all started when I decided to search for a spring mattress on Flipkart. My search was brief, but soon after this, Flipkart started sending me marketing emails with a list of mattresses on offer. I felt as if I’m a privileged customer, with so many offers coming my way. Hence, I decided to buy one of the products on the list, which was being offered at 22, 700 rupees.
I paid online and placed the order. Three days after placing the order, even before I received the product, I wanted to check how much the product costs without the offer that I received as a privileged customer. To my dismay, I found that the exact same product was being offered on Flipkart for 4000/- rupees less than what I paid just 3 days back. I wanted to cancel the order and place a new order at the new price, but Flipkart didn’t allow me to cancel the order.
I went out and checked in the local stores and even there the same product was being sold for 3500/- rupees less than what I had paid online. On being contacted, Flipkart customer care told me that product price keeps changing every day and I cannot cancel the order for this product, after 24 hours of placing the order. So it’s perfectly fine if I have paid 4000/- rupees extra for this product. Wow. what a response:-)
Product Quality:
When I received the product, I observed that fabric was of poor quality & already damaged at some places and the stitches had come out at many places. I wanted to return and get a refund, to purchase a different brand, but again Flipkart customer care informed me that I can only get a replacement, as per their policy. No return and refund allowed. I waited for 15 days for a replacement and got a different piece, but still the quality of the product did not change. I could still see that the stitches had come out at many places.
At this point, I felt there’s no point in reaching out to Flipkart customer care once again since I would receive another piece of similar sub-standard quality. Hence, I kept the defective piece after paying 4000/- rupees more than the market price.
Conclusion:
So, two big issues with Flipkart policy - a) Not allowing cancellation after 24 hours of placing the order and b) Not allowing return/refund even if the customer doesn’t like the quality of the product.
Hence, my suggestion is not to buy any expensive product online, if the cancellation/ return/replacement policy is as bad as that being followed by Flipkart. It’s better to check the product physically before buying it.