I am a regular shopper from ShopClues and have been shopping for more than 2 years. Most of the time they were able to deliver the product on time and I am quite satisfied with their service, except a few times, recently, when some orders got cancelled due to unavailability and I got refund on time, but overall I was satisfied with this site.
Last month I purchased an LED TV from it(Order#: 16952785) and they delivered the product through DTDC within a stipulated time, but I was unfortunate to see that the set was a defective one. I immediately raised a return request and got reply from ShopClues support team with instructions of how to proceed. I worked accordingly and after a week I got a mail stating that my return request got approved and their courier partner will contact me and pick this up. During this 1 week the support team got constantly connected with me with various mails updating me the status and seeking information and photographs. I really thank them for it.
I expected that DTDC will complete the return request as they delivered it to me, but suddenly yesterday I got a mail stating that pickup is not possible as the area is not serviceable and I need to send it back to them, though they will reimburse shipping cost in the form of cluebucks.
I personally contacted DTDC and also Bluedart and they are willing to pick it up.I could not understand how come ShopClues term my area not serviceable when reputed courier companies are willing to serve me. Moreover, taking the reimbursement as cluebucks is not acceptable for me, as the money gets blocked. Again, probably these courier companies would charge more to an individual than a company and whether ShopClues would accept that charge and reimburse me is a big question.
Let’s see what happens.
UPDATE:
ShopClues customer care was in constant communication with me. They gave me an option to choose an alternate address for reverse pickup. I gave the address of my relative who live in Kolkata, but unfortunately this area also is not serviceable to ShopClues. I wondered how come this company thought of having existence in this highly competitive marketplace.
Then suddenly customer care stopped all mail communication with me for almost 10 days making me totally turmoil, after all so much bucks are blocked and no hope for recovery.
Sensing all doors are closed I knocked the door of Akosha( http://www.akosha.com). They charged me heftily, but they turned the magic wand. The stopped communication started again. ShopClues came with a new option. They gave me the address of a courier company and asked me to drop the product there, which I agreed. The next day an executive from customer care called me for the first time and gave me a token number for dropping the TV to the courier company’s office. I did the same and product got dispatched readily. After a week to ten days I got the full refund of money in my account and the chapter came to an end.
During this whole process I felt that ShopClues has lack of effective infrastructure for reverse pickup for big parcels and they are heavily dependent on courier companies.
CONCLUSION: From my experience I feel for small to medium sized articles ShopClues is really good, but for the big ones second thinking is required.
Regarding further shopping from the site, friends it is up to you, but for me I already ordered half a dozen of products from this site after this incident. Most of them arrived safely and some are in transit, but for big expensive products my answer is a big NO.