Online Shopping – Bad Experience
1. The Shoe shopping
In India online stores have sprung up like anything. There are so many TV commercials being run to promote these stores like, Myntra, Jabong, eBay, Snapdeal, Naaptol etc. It was my birthday in second week of April and I opted to buy some accessories for myself. I mostly choose online shopping for ease of connivance that you don’t have to go out in summer heat and also it saves on car gas costs. I decided to buy Casual shoes and Sunglasses for myself as a Birthday gift. Usually I wear slip-on leather shoes but this time I was determined to find a slip-on type sport shoe for myself.
I use coupons to get discounts on items I purchase online. I found two coupons from sites like desidime and coupondunia. One was of value Rs.200 on buying items above Rs.1000 and other was of value Rs.500 on buying items above Rs.2000. Discounts? Keep on reading the article, you will come to know about the trick these stores play on you. I searched a few online stores and selected one slip-on type shoe from Fila brand. It was priced at INR Rs.1899 other was priced INR Rs.1999 . I called up Jabong customer Care number and asked whether INR Rs.500 discount will be available on item priced INR Rs.1999. The lady was neither answering in denial nor in affirmation, but after some pressure talk she said you have to buy item above INR Rs.2000 value to get INR Rs.500 discount. Then I used INR Rs.200 discount on item priced at INR Rs.1899. This item was listed for free shipping in my area and I opted for COD (cash on delivery) mode of payment, for which they charged INR Rs.39. Now the effective discount on this shoe was only INR Rs.161. I wear UK size 40 cushioned shoes and usually same size of sports shoe fit me. So I ordered size 40 Fila smash III black shoes from Jabong.com. I was surprised that order was delivered within 24 hours at my residence and payment was collected by GoJavas courier boy. After opening the parcel, I tried the shoes and found out that these were very tight and felt quite a bit of pressure on my big toe. My mother said, ”it might be hurting you because these are new shoes and you have not been using sport shoes from quite some time”. Wearing Fila shoes, I walked around for about 5 minutes on the carpeted floor. It was not getting comfortable at all, so I decided to call back the customer care at Jabong.com and asked about the exchanging the shoes. At first the customer care guy told me that I have two options, either I can return the item and get refund or get it exchanged with any other item of same value. I was determined to buy myself some accessories on my birthday, so I chose to get another item from them. I ordered Liberty Windsor shoes priced at INR Rs.2199. There was shipping charges of INR Rs.99 on this item so they deducted the price of Fila shoes and added the shipping charges and once again INR Rs.39 for COD mode of payment, which turned out that I have to pay INR Rs.299 on receiving Liberty Windsor shoes. In actual the shoes cost me INR Rs.1788 + Rs.300 totaling INR Rs.2088 with an effective discount of INR Rs.249 on total cost of Rs.2337. Whereas last year, I bought the same shoes from a shoe store at Sector 19, Chandigarh for INR Rs.1300 when it had a MRP of Rs.1890 at that time. That was huge discount of Rs.590. Now you can judge yourself how online shopping makes you feel.
2. The Sunglasses story
The second gift for birthday was decided to be a good quality branded sunglasses. I saw a listing on ebay.in where a seller was offering huge discount on genuine Reebok sunglasses with 100% UV protection and he also offered to refund if the product received is found to be not original. Normally ebay merchants go extra mile to satisfy the customers and receive a positive ratings from customers. Believing the claim made by merchant from Gujrat, I purchased the Reebok sunglasses. The Sunglasses arrived on my Birthday and I went to my friend’s place where my friend pointed out the reflective distortion of these sunglasses and we came to know that it was dead cheap duplicate item.
The visual optics was delivering distorted vision and it did not took long that I got headache. On returning home I wrote to the merchant and posted photos of the poor quality Sunglasses and asked him to refund my money. Yesterday I have sent the Reebok sunglasses back to merchant via DTDC Courier Company and it costs me INR Rs.90 for it was 300 gm parcel.
In the end, I did not felt much pleased with online shopping.