If I were to draw up a list of sites that are doing their best to give the Internet a bad name, then , Indiatimes Auctions would top that list, and that’s going purely by experience. I was hesitant to try out Internet Auctions, given all the hazards associated with it. Finally, I thought I should try out one being conducted by Indiatimes Auctions, ie, not by a private individual, but the host site itself. After all, Indiatimes was the progeny of a 160 year old company and trustworthy, if nothing else.
As soon as I discovered I’d won the auction, I dispatched a check to Indiatimes which was promptly encashed by them. Well, that was over a month and a half back, but I’m yet to set eyes on the goods to date. They don’t even have a proper help desk and even after repeated phone calls over the past month, I am nowhere nearer finding out whether I’ll ever get my stuff or not.
Lemme go back down the road a little bit and tell u something about Indiatimes Auctions. It’s part of the Indiatimes portal run by the Times of India group, one of (if not) the biggest media empires in India. In an effort to generate interest in online auctions, the host site itself holds auctions instead of merely providing space for individuals and companies to do so. If they take on the onus of running auctions, then they should realise it’s not enough to just conduct the auction and pocket the money; they should also ensure that the product reaches the winning bidder too. Well, it seems to me that they haven’t thought that through yet because they don’t even have a dedicated help feature on the site. The Help section of the site gives an email address from which I am yet to get a response and they also have a phone number which is presumably not connected to a phone because no-one answers!!!
Basically, what seems to have happened is that Indiatimes Auctions was trying to be too clever by half by trying to convey the impression the goods I was bidding for was actually in its possession while what it actually does is to conduct the auction and then pass on the details of the winning bid to its partner so that they could get the goods across to me. But, that in no way absolves it of the responsibility of ensuring that the goods reach me since as far as I am concerned, I am dealing with Indiatimes Auctions.
Thanks to the fact that I also live in Delhi, I was able to obtain additional phone numbers for Indiatimes Auctions(that did have phones attached to them)But, that has not made for any improvement to my predicament; a typical call (of which there have been many) goes like this- ’’Hello, my name is Cherian Samuel and I had won auction No...’’ ’’Yes, Mr. Samuel, can you hold on while I contact my suppliers in Ahmedabad...Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Samuel, I can’t seem to get through to them...we really have to fix those guys...Can I call you back later..’’ If and when I do get a call back, it’s with more excuses of the type given above. Because I’m in Delhi I’m at least able to get in touch with these guys - I shudder to think of what the poor souls outside of Delhi must be going through. In any case, that was my first and last Internet Auction!
Along the way, I have realised quite a few things that apply to the Internet shopping experience in India in general. In the first instance, very few shopping sites which are part of portals like Rediff.com and Indiatimes.com actually stock the goods you see on their sites. They all have what Rediff likes to call ’enabling partners’ ie, third party sellers to whom Rediff or Indiatimes passes on the orders they receive. So, ultimately, one’s shopping experience depends upon the efficiency of those suppliers. More often than not those suppliers are unable to provide an acceptable level of service leading to problems of the type mentioned above. But then, I believe the onus is on these sites to work with their suppliers to raise standards of service instead of blaming them for these problems.