On 21st October 2012, I’d ordered Note2 from shopping.indiatimes.com for my hubby’s bday . Initially, the website said that they take 7 days to deliver the product and immediately after confirming the order, they said thay would not be able to deliver before 8th November 012 (17 days after placing the order). Got a decent discount, which is why I ventured out of the safe zones of flipkart and the like. After that we called them to send it a bit earlier as my hubby’s bday was on 1st November.
They said they would expidate the process and then disappeared completely. We received no information whatsoever on our product and I would log on every day to check its status. They have been using some Delhivery Express, which boasts of some high professional people and prompt services. So on their website, it said that the product reached bangalore hub on 4th November. I kept calling the Delhivery’s Delhi office which has four lines but which takes at least 30-40 tries to connect (I think they have too many unsatisfied consumers calling them). They would keep promising to deliver the product "today"but their today never came. They gave me the office phone of Delhivery’s B’lore office. the person there said the ohone was still in the hub (and this is now 8th November alread) and he has no clue. When I got angry, he shouted back at me and banged down the phone, Again the Delhi guys were apologetic and made more false promises.
The indiatimes people were equally unhelpful. They said that they cannot cancel the order till we receive the shipment and refuse to take it (what crap.. what if it never reaches us). So after 100s of phone calls (primarily STDs) and shouting and waiting (I would not go out of the house and my hubby would not leave the office before 7 PM just in case, the shipment came)... I finally found the facebook profile of one of the co-founders. Intiailly, he was helpful and gave me assurance of delivery only to tell me a day later that they could not race the shipment. It took some more shouting at them and arguing so that they could trace our shipment.
We could have refused to take the product, but my fear was that at this rate, our money would never be refunded. SO to cut a LONG story short, we finally went to the godown of Delhivery on 14th November and picked our product. And discovered thousands of shipments lying there in an almost messed up state. It included Homeshop 18, fashion and you.
So, people NEVER order from these sites unless you want to screw your mental peace and happiness. Terrible, terrible service. I’m never ordering from Indiatimes again . Shame on you, Indiatimes, for resorting to such unreliable courier services to save a buck.
What you don’t realize is that the bad publicity you’ll get after this review is far, far worse for you than the money you saved by using that cheap, unreliable courier service. Are any of the big shots at Indiatimes listening? Looking at the other reviews about your site, you’re probably the only large organization that customers are consistently frustrated with!!!
A sincere appeal to everybody who reads this review. Even if you get tempted by a few hundred rupees discount because of some coupon code at Indiatimes, don’t give in to the temptation. It’s absolutely not worth it. Let’s all boycott Indiatimes till they stop resorting to such customer-unfriendly practices!!!