For starters, Pepperfry does not provide you with an email id where you can communicate your grievances concerning things like extremely inferior packaging, damaged product or poor assembly - all the issues that I faced having ordered a product - an office chair worth INR 9.4K, with them. The only way you can communicate with them(besides calling them of course) is via submitting a form on their website, and all you get in return is a "thank you" note or an email quoting a certain complaint number or some such thing! You can never keep a record of the communication you send them since it does not go from your inbox! They send you standalone responses over separate emails without appending the communication you send them! What’s more - they say whatever they please - even things which are not relevant to your request, grievance or feedback or things you categorically have stated you do not wish to for! So it is like a one-way communication and almost unethical. Their systems are designed to suit them and are entirely customer unfriendly. You can never even prove that you wrote to them or have a record of written conversations with them! That to me is close to being unethical and non-transparent. That’s not all - they will even limit the amount of content and images you can share with them in some forms they give you as a substitute to emailing them. In desperation, I tried emailing them on every single email id which I had received emails from while ordering like orders@pepperfry.com but all in vain!
We ordered a chair from them that arrived in a very poor packaging. The guys who delivered the product struggled to take the product out as the parts of the product were stuffed & strained badly against each other with no internal packaging whatsoever! They even failed to assemble it. The back of the chair which had a delicate mesh/fabric felt not stiff enough - as it was impacted. Certain elements of the chair had also got a little crumpled like the bottom ribbed structure. Next, we were asked to call a carpenter which we did and he arrived without any prior consent on time of arrival, spent less than 10 mins fixing the chair and his work did not look ok to us( for instance the screws of the chair didn’t look like they were fitted very well) but he paid no heed to our feedback, behaved badly and stormed out!
As soon as I sat on the chair, two screws fell off from it and I got off immediately to prevent a mishap - fall/injury! Also, as expected the back mesh was uncomfortable and slacky. Clearly, it was impacted. The chair hence was obviously not acceptable.
So we called pepperfry again! Long story short - we asked for either replacement of the chair or refund. The first day they said they will get back on how long the replacement would take(customer rep: Shalu) and today they said that they don’t have a replacement policy at all and they will prefer sending a new carpenter to repair the chair instead!(Cust rep: Ajay). I insisted on refund but they did not budge and simply sent me an email later that a new carpenter will come with no history whatsoever of all that has transpired. No prior communication appended or case history captured. Nothing! Just a one liner that a carpenter will be visiting(along with a new compaint/ref number)!
Imagine being forced to accept a damaged product and accepting "repairs" - on a brand new product. Infact some parts of the chair like the back seat mesh will not even be repaired as they "feel" it is okay just by seeing a photo(and not by experiencing it). I wonder what I can do now since I have already paid up.
Additionally their customer care is pathetic and annoying. They will even question whether any of the things that you are complaining about have actually happened because there is no witness from pepperfry!
Avoid pepperfry! It is a waste of everything good and an epBrianbalakumaranme of unprofessionalism.
Dated: 04-11-2017