I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone from Letsbuy.com. This is my review of their service.(Samsung Galaxy S II is an amazing phone. Absolutely awesome. I love it. It is the best Android phone in the market at the moment with no competition. After seeing my phone, 3 others in my office, bought this phone! A well known reviewer’s review here, Part 1 and Part 2.)
A couple of things about online shopping in India.
Online shopping in India is still coming of age and has considerably improved in the last 5 years. Fears of astronomical delays or products not reaching are much reduced now days, however, not completely eliminated. Unlike in the west though, in India, online shopping still is slightly more expensive than going over to a shop. Sounds backwards right? That too is changing nowadays and Flipkart.com is an established website, changing the game.
1. One thing to remember whenever purchasing anything online, that when the item is finally delivered to you, depending on the item and it’s price, you may have to pay octroi over and above what you have already paid the dealer website.
In the case of my Samsung Galaxy S II, I had to pay Rs. 1407 as octroi.
2. I have still not experienced 1-3 day deliveries, as I have in UK. In the UK, whenever I placed an order before 14:00 on BT Shop or Dabs.com, it was almost certain to reach the next day, or one day after that.
Right so onto my order. The offer that Letsbuy.com had was as follows:-
Samsung Galaxy S II+ Samsung HM1000 bluetooth headset+ Molife Fit to use hard case with screen guard+ Samsung HDTV adapter, all for R. 32, 830(+ the octroi mentioned above). It sounded like a steal.
I initially called Letsbuy.com to confirm the offer, with it’s freebies and that the price included taxes. I waited around 3 minutes on hold this first time that I called them. The sales person who answered the call was not exceptional and was not bad either. It at least seemed that the training was there, but could improve a bit.
He confirmed the details of the offer and answered all my doubts without ambiguity and also explained the process I had to follow(since it was a pre-booking offer with a slightly different process).
I placed a pre-launch booking order for the phone on the website by paying Rs. 1000.
I immediately got an mail confirmation for my order.
The company’s work timings mentioned in the order confirmation email were wrong. I mentioned it to them in one of my later calls to them, and have yet to verify if that has been corrected(something you can look out for).
The next email I got from them was a little startling. It said that a shipment was dispatched to my address. I thought maybe they sent the phone directly and were expecting cash on delivery, which I was totally unprepared for.
I received one more mail from them to say that I could now place my final order, and use the voucher which I would receive shortly. The email also detailed a delay in the HDTV adapter for the phone, and mentioned that it would reach by mid June.
I then called them up to ask them about the delivery and also that I had not received the voucher in a follow up email. He gave me the voucher number over the phone.
The shipment delivery later turned out to be the voucher I was supposed to use to book and place my final order. Not sure why they couldn’t just email it and physically posted a printout.
Anyway, to cut the story short, I placed my final order and received my Samsung a week later. I think there is room for improvement here to make deliveries in 3 working days. I have seen Flipkart.com deliver books in 3 days, not sure about electronics. The delivery carrier was Aramex. Maybe Bluedart would have been faster!?!
My last call was for the delayed HDTV adapter on the 20th of June. The customer service executive informed me that I need not worry about it, it was not forgotten and would definitely be delivered, and the delay was from the manufacturer. He also let me know I would not require to follow up.
A week later I received the HDTV adapter.
Over all the service at Letsbuy.com was good. They could give some serious competition to Flipkart.
But for now, Flipkart is still ahead in the game.
A few annoyances about Letsbuy.com
- The Letsbuy.com website does seem to be randomly inaccessible. No reason or understanding as to why.
2. The working hours mentioned in the order confirmation email does not match with the website timings and I ended up calling them before 10 a.m.
It happened on two occasions that I called Letsbuy.com helpline, and I was on hold for a full 5 minutes and then was automatically disconnected. It was exactly 5:12 on the phone time, both times.
They never bothered to ask/inform me about the octroi over and above the payment that I was going to make.