As a veteron of PepperFry shopping (6 orders in 4 months), I can advise you reliably to stay away.Out of 6, only 1 order shipped without any hassles. One of them dragged for about 1 month before PepperFry cancelled it and refunded my money in PepperPoints.
Here is my order history: 100055404:5-Jun-12, 100209488: 13-Jul-12, 100257067: 4-Sep-12, Cancelled by P.Fry, 100279214: 20-Sep-12, 100290359: 27-Sep-12, 100290629: 27-Sep-12. I am still battling it out with P.fry for the last two orders placed in September.
Here’s what is good:
It’s one of the best looking eCommerce website in the Indian scene. Very functional, very interactive. It uses all the latest web-design techniques.
The product images are shot professionally and described fairly accurately (compare to Timtara where a Tamron VC Lens image features for a Non-VC lens. The difference is about 15K!).
Here’s what is bad:
The 7-day shipping guarantee means absolutely nothing to them. It’s just words printed on their website.
From my chat sessions with them, it was apparent that there are four departments that don’t like each other refuse to work together.
The Product-selection team and Website team is good at their job. The Inventory team maintains an empty warehouse and only runs to supplier once the order is placed.
The customer care team is run out of a BPO and they have no idea of the operations. In fact, they seem to be using the PepperFry website to get their information.
Here’s what is worse:
Reaching P.Fry customer support is a nightmare.
They do not respond to emails (I know, I have tried). Their telephone numbers are busy constantly and have really long wait times.
The online chat sessions take 20 minutes before you can get a customer care representative, who promptly asks for 48 hours to "escalate" the issue. P.Fry does not issue transcripts of chat to customers so that a log can be maintained. The chat sessions do not feature date & time code either so that you can take a screen-shot and present it as reliable evidence.
P.Fry does not refund customers in cash but they like to receive payment in cash. They refund customers in PepperPoints "only" and it takes another Rs.15/- before you can use the points to do further shopping. Talk about throwing good money over bad. Perhaps we too should have an option of paying them in "Papads" to shop online.
Once you place your order, you maybe issued AWB numbers. Please do not get excited; the AWB numbers maybe fake and will return error messages on the courier company’s website. For ex: currently, I have been issued a AWB No. 800993691081 for Courier company FedEx. Needless to say, the AWB number is not working. FedEx never received the package.
P.Fry’s servers also do not run on accurate time. On 27-Sep-12, I placed an order at 11:57pm using a coupon that was valid till 11:59pm. The coupon was rejected. It took me 1 hours (1 AM!) before I was connected to Customer Care on Chat where I spent an additional 40 minutes hopelessly trying to retrieve the situation. Can I guarantee that my computer runs on accurate time? Yes. I use a Atomic-Time-Sync software along with Microsoft Window’s own time-sync to keep my clock synced to the second.