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-   -   Malpractices in Flipkart's Big Billion sale (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/202802-malpractices-flipkarts-big-billion-sale-6.html)

Wow! Unbelievable. Did they lock/close your account because of this thread catching up attention? Are they not ready to listen to what is happening to thousands of their customers and try to rectify their issues?
I truly hope the decision that they made to lock your account ends up in their biggest PR disaster. Flipkart is just making use of the lack of consumer protection rules. I hope they really learn a lesson or two from this ignorant decision.

Though they have rights to bar a customer from buying from their store, it looks like a stupid decision to block your account for highlighting their shortcomings/problem.

Let us make Flipkart (in)famous, something similar we did to Ford, I am sure they will come back with amicable solution.

I think you can involve the credit card issuer also for your gift card related concern.

Malpractice seems to be taking place on several e commerce websites. You have to pay more attention when there are sales as that is when they inflate the price, show a unrealistic discount percentage which prompts you to hit that "Buy" button without even thinking. Time to head back to the good old brick and mortar store and get a quote. With the advent of e commerce, most of us have become lazy to head to a store to get an idea of what the price of a product is on the market.

I can share two examples.

I picked up a LG top load washing machine for my folks recently. LG's web price was Rs. 24,000. If you clicked Buy Now, it took you to another section on LG's website which indicated a lower price of Rs. 22,000. You hit Add to Cart and the price further reduces to about Rs. 20,000. Finally; my dad went to a store who quoted way lower at Rs. 16,800 for the same machine with delivery! When the machine arrived, the sticker price on the box was Rs. 22,000.

Another account was for a weighing scale sold on Amazon. A brand called Soehnle. Amazon indicate 73% off for a scale called Analog Personal Scale Loupe. Sold by a company called Perumana. My dad calls the Distributor who claims that they have only put up the product on Amazon and they say that the product price is Rs. 2200 (Not Rs. 8000 as Amazon indicates.). He observed something similar for a food weighing scale too. Pictured below. 91% discount! A food weighing scale for Rs.11k! You gotto be kidding.

It goes like once bitten twice shy. I have been bitten at least half a dozen times by Flipkart. I have had plenty of bad experiences with flipkart. So much, so that now i don't even keep flipkart app in my phone and I am ready to buy a bit costlier item from amazon or paytm.


First incident i remember is issue with Motorola flip phone i had purchased from flipkart. Flipkart delivered me a defective phone where only one sim worked in a dual sim phone. More so on reaching out to customer care they said get it in written from Motorola service center that phone is defective which i ran around and got. Finally customer care said phone is replace only and cannot be refunded. The icing on the cake was the online price of the phone had increased and flipkart asked me to cough up balance amount for replacement. I was very frustated with flipkart and even threatened them with case in consumer court but they casually asked me to go ahead and file one because flipkart is big company and they will handle it. To my rescue came the motorola service center guy who asked me to get the phone replaced directly through motorola.


I also remember plenty of ordeal where flipkart courier service would only deliver COD items at my address and for all other paid items my area was shown out of service. I had to run after courier company because flipkart executive said they don't have any control on courier service.


This company is a great example of how you start something with good intention but end up gaining up only negatives. Reasons can only be pondered upon. I feel in competitive staff, total high headedness and greed maybe some of them.

Amazon Vs. Flipkart is like Coke Vs. Pepsi.
Similar comparison Uber Vs. Ola.

My observation is that, whenever there are such comparisons, it is the marketing departments handling of social media that wins the war at-least in social media. (Not Team-BHP, I am sure). Interestingly there is an underlying "Indian Vs Foreign" emotion in such comparisons (in social media) and I am not claiming immunity from such emotion.

I dealt with both Flipkart and Amazon and my experience has been equally bad with both. Both delivered more than promised in some cases and both under-delivered in some cases.

I am not sure if "luring people by discounts but not delivering" is their intended marketing plan. I don't think they are that stupid to consider buyers as this stupid. Surely such experience will only put off a customer and lost customers means lesser "valuation" of the company.

Amazon has more and global experience and stronger rigour for quality so it has an edge in systems, procedures, quality management, marketing managemet (including social media) etc. But I dont believe they have more customer focus that Flipkart. both are same.

This particular experience I have with Amazon also. I once bought a kitchen item which was delivered incomplete. I asked for a replacement and I gave the rating "one star" for delivery. I got a prompt replacement, which was again incomplete. This time I wrote a review cautioning the buyers that the description is misleading and my review was never published! I got a message saying my review was not meeting Amazon review standards!!

Flipkart is not alone, adding my experience with Amazon Great Indian Sale...

We were eyeing on 1 tonne Onida GDR123 model, before the sale went on...

8-Oct - price 26990
9-Oct - price 25990
10-Oct - price 24990, but end of the day it showed 21990 as missed lightning sale. Frankly I haven't checked during the day to observe how the price went down from 24990 to 21990
11-Oct - No stock
12-Oct - No stock
13-Oct - price 25990 but they will not ship to my locality
14-Oct - price 25990 but will not ship to my locality
15-Oct - No stock
16-Oct - Rs 26990 but will ship to my locality

And even today, the price is 26990 & they will ship to my locality!!

And what's more? During the sale time, 10% instant discount was with SBI & HDFC debit cards with effective price of Rs 24300; as I type there's still instant discount with YES, RBL & PNB debit cards. No cost EMI was applicable before, during & even after the sale.

To conclude, I think, all these are again sales gimmick, these offers are available most of the time during the year or better deals go unannounced; I observed most discounts were with mobile phones & not with home appliances or mostly with small stuffs.

I'm sure someone someday will come up with proper tracking on most of these goods as how the prices keep fluctuating & with proper evidence if buying from these websites during the sale season does make sense or not. Until then, we have to do our homework properly, inquire both offline & online stores, consult with friends, rely upon independent unpaid reviews to take an informed decision

We already have browser plugins such as BuyHatke which shows historical prices of any particular product in Amazon and Flipkart. It is a good way of knowing whether the prices are better during these big bash sales :thumbs up

However, for offline prices you still need to venture out and do your homework. Typically offline stores seem to have the latest models of the appliances that you want to buy and the online websites sell models that are atleast 1 generation old. I am sure companies such as LG etc do that in order to keep their brick and mortar retailers happy and not complain - "we give you the latest stocks, whereas the online stores get them only after a certain period of time"

Latest update, I had sent an email to a Flipkart executive, attaching his reply below.



I got the refund for the balance amount which was stuck with Flipkart, this was a refund for the payment I made through the credit card and was converted to a no cost EMI. However there was no notification from my bank(HDFC) or Flipkart that the refund is through. I just checked my credit card statement online and I see a credit for the amount.

I did speak to my other card company(axis bank) to see if the gift cards can be canceled and my reward points be credited back, their answer was obvious, they said they cannot help and I need to talk to Flipkart. I called Flipkart post my call with axis bank, Flipkart’s answer was no. This conversation was before the whole account blocking fiasco. I have got to a point where the only thing stuck with them is those 4K worth gift cards, I am hoping to get those refunded and never return to Flipkart ever.

Pramod

Since last year I do most of my online shopping from Amazon. Being Prime member delivery is mostly by next day and haven't experienced a single issue till now.

Flipkart is only for items which aren't available on Amazon or cheaper at Flipkart. Bought few in Big billion first day and were delivered within 2 days. So, my experience with Flipkart has been fine till now. But, my first preference is Amazon always.

This is so stupid and dumb of Flipkart. I mean did they try to reason out with the User as to why there were so many returns initiated by him. If the vendor delivers a wrong product - what is the user supposed to do? Keep it or return it? If they keep sending the wrong product - the user will keep returning it till he gets the right one. Instead of cancelling the users account - they should take the vendor to task.

Pramod - I would suggest you make a list of all the products you have purchased and returned (along with the reason for returning) and put them up over here and on any other Social Media.

I too was eyeing a phone in Flipkart and converted some reward points to 1.5K worth Flipkart GC and loaded it to my account for that. I had decided to buy the phone on the last day of sale. I added this item in cart and while checkout I got error that item is not in stock and when I go back and refresh the listing page I was able to see it in stock so I tried adding to cart again but it failed at multiple stages of checkout.

I thought this was due to some system issues due to heavy traffic, so I tried for sometime and gave up. It was good that my order did not go through and then get cancelled afterwards but now I have to use my gift card to get something else from Flipkart within the next 12 months.

Unbelievable, Pramod!
They locked your account and had the audacity to reply that the reason is your social media post.

Even that response is also confusing. It says w.r.t. your social media post and then goes on to claim unusual number of returns. So which one is the reason then?

That Mishra ji must be an over 40 IT fellow with a colonial mindset (if we don't like a customer post, we ban him) :uncontrol I doubt if he has any idea about how SM works. Laughable that they are signing off as team social media.

They should be taken to task by letting the social media monster take over and rip them apart.

Seeing that response I responded the poll with 'bad' even when my experiences were somewhat neutral.

That is really terrible and a cheap practice by Flipkart, i've never really fallen for the diwali sales and all anyways, not worth waiting for the sale to order, then worrying about ordering at the right time, then feeling frustrated if it goes out of stock in that small window and then ending up buying what you didn't really need in the first place.

i've always bought only the small stuff like Blu-rays, phone wires and power bank kind of stuff online and Amazon has always been my go to for all these things, the experience has been outstanding everytime, hassle free ordering and delivery experience, returns are super easy too and whenever i needed their support, they have been great.
I used to order discs from Amazon UK and they sent it using royal mail and then India Post delivered them here.
Needless to say there were delays sometimes and the stuff got lost a couple of times too.

They used to immediately re-send it without asking any questions everytime, in a couple of occasions i ended up having 2 of them because India post delivered them after a few months. Had a small issue with Snapdeal once and long story short i have'nt shopped with them since.

The only reason why i shop online is ease of use and excellent customer care experience, if Flipkart is not being able to deliver on the latter, then no point using it.

I buy stuff like clothes, shoes exclusively from actual stores after trying them and experiencing them first hand.

More expensive stuff like TV has always been bought from Gaffar market by our family because of a huge difference (sometimes 2x and in the case of bigger TVs in the range of 40-45k, even more in some cases), it is a huge gamble but has paid off everytime.
Sony, Samsung have mostly been super reliable.

We even buy mobile phones from there but they come with a valid bill and warranty, the prices there are lowest anywhere though, Amazon and Flipkart have come close because of their close relationships with the companies directly, and the gap has narrowed down to just about 1-2k in case of a phone costing 40k but Gaffar is cheaper still.
But yes, Websites like amazon have brought reasonable prices to masses and that can't be denied.

There was a time about 5-6 years ago when i used to buy phones at atleast 5-7k cheaper than my friends who bought it from Company showrooms or Chroma and all, now the difference is too little between Amazon and Gaffar.

This is the future for better or for worse for a lot stuff, Amazon atleast is not doing too bad in replacing the shops. The prices for most small items is actually much lower than offline retailers and almost at par with wholesale markets, though some stuff is still a lot cheaper there but generally this does better than regular retailers, i recently wanted to buy Airpods and just checked Amazon and they had this sale going on so they were offering 25% off on them, much more than anywhere else, i placed the order right then and got them no problems at all.

This i've noticed a lots of times on Amazon too, the price they strike out is fake a lot of time, even if the seller is Cloudtail (which they own), this is downright cheating on their part and we need to watch out for this carefully. There's another thing they do, i bought Whey protein from them 15 days ago, the price was 3700, they increased it to 4500 after a week just because of their big billion sale, only to decrease it once again and call it a lightning deal by selling it for 3900 (which is still more than what i had paid on a regular day)

The list of products I purchase from them:

1.Canon 200d DSLR Camera(Delivered)
2.One Motorola Pulse Headset(which came free with the camera, its delivered but shows cancelled)
3.Two Orders of GoPro Hero 2018(cancelled by them)
4.One set of 3D mat for my car(which was cancelled by me after this fiasco since it was not getting shipped after 3-4 days)
5.one Kingston 128 GB SD card(cancelled by them, same reason as the GoPro)
6.two Packs of Pampers L size Diapers(was not cancelled, don't know the status now)

After I received the first email from them regarding high cancellation, I did check that there were other things ordered and cancelled before 2016(which i did not, i joined them recently to buy a camera)

This is true to the best of my knowledge, I do not have access to check their website and my account anymore.

What I suspect is these orders were getting cancelled since I was using their gift cards

Pramod