Team-BHP - The Online Shopping Thread

Quote:

Originally Posted by binand (Post 3815595)

Not condoning their behaviour, but the site has not agreed to anything; it is you who have agreed to buy a certain good at the listed price and indicated your good faith by putting up the entire transaction amount upfront. It is up to the site or the vendor to decide whether to let you have it at that price or not. In this case, it seems they decided not to, in this case.

This the position the e-commerce companies take. Until it is tested in court, unfortunately their view holds good and we are bound by it (we can only vote by our feet).

It sounds to me as if you are asking how to evade duties.

Here's the probably-relevant judgement (somehow I memorised it!) from English law, and I'm assuming that Indian law reflects it...

The placing of goods in a shop window is an invitation to treat. It is not an offer, the acceptance of which constitutes a contract

However, since the learned judge said that (I forget the case name and when) a lot of consumer-protection law has come into existence, and I very much doubt the legality, in UK, of putting goods in your window, or advertising them in any other way, with a price at which you will not sell.

In the cases we are looking at here, even in India, where the order has been confirmed, I think the existence of a contract is obvious, and the seller cannot change it.

I don't think it needs a court case to establish that, but it might to enforce it --- and one enforcement won't make any difference, because sellers will continue to do stuff like this because they will, almost certainly, get away with it.

NB: I am not a lawyer. I just rather enjoyed studying it, a bit, 40 years ago. Not in India.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3815660)

In the cases we are looking at here, even in India, where the order has been confirmed, I think the existence of a contract is obvious, and the seller cannot change it.

None of these e-commerce guys have explicitly stated what constitutes an offer and an acceptance, except Amazon - who says in their conditions of sale (emphasis mine):

Quote:

Your order is an offer to us to buy the product(s) in your order. When you place an order to purchase a product from us, you will receive an e-mail confirming receipt of your order and containing the details of your order (the "Order Confirmation E-mail"). The Order Confirmation E-mail is acknowledgement that we have received your order, and does not confirm acceptance of your offer to buy the product(s) ordered. We only accept your offer, and conclude the contract of sale for a product ordered by you, when the product is dispatched to you and an e-mail confirmation is sent to you that the product has been dispatched to you (the "Dispatch Confirmation E-mail").

Thank you. I'm not certain that Amazon can define the law, but I suppose they can define their terms.

We have to remember that the trade that brings us to this site has terms and conditions where the price you pay for your new car is not fixed until the day you collect it --- and that is not just in India.

So, perhaps I was being naive in trying to make this kind of thing black and white: it is not as easy as I was thinking when I made my previous post.

Actually Thad you are right. Most businesses draw such one sided terms and get away with it till someone challenges it.

In this case you have opened a business front for all. You quote a price and someone pays you that and you accept it and send a confirmation. Post that for 10 days you keep saying you are processing the order and keep seeking more time to dispatch. And then suddenly cancel the order saying we are out of stock. On the parallel you increase the price of the same sku.

This is a classic case of violation of indian contract law in my opinion.

Yesterday I got a mail from Amazon saying that my package was delayed because Blue Dart could not find my address. I wrote back asking why they did not use Google Maps... or even the telephone!

I got a decent email in reply. The package was delivered today.

It was only a 24-hour delay, but the question remains why a major courier could not find a city location, given its full postal address, including landmark and phone number.

Well, I guess things may not always be that simple for the guy out on the bike, and have updated the landmark with the nearest main-road detail.

update: and another email confirming that package has been delivered and inviting response if I have not actually got it. I'm actually impressed!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3817320)

Yesterday I got a mail from Amazon saying that my package was delayed because Blue Dart could not find my address. I wrote back asking why they did not use Google Maps... or even the telephone!

I face this quite often when its someone other than Amazon doing the delivery (even for Amazon fulfilled items, they sometimes use courier partners).

I've found the common trend is that:
a) The message comes late in the evening or at night
b) No call to locate address
c) The same delivery partner has previously delivered to the same address, even days ago

My strong suspicion - given point a - is that the delivery chap is running late and wants to finish his shift. Now, that's not a reason they can use to avoid delivering a package, so they cop out by selecting this reason, thereby shifting blame to the customer.

Complaints to Amazon have been met with the usual platitudes, although I hope that they get enough complaints to crack down on this.

Its even more annoying if you've paid for expedited delivery.

I earlier used to stick to ebay.in for my online purchases as the layout of the site and ordering procedure was much straight-forward. For sophisticated or high-value items, I used Snapdeal.

I ordered a backpack worth Rs. 948 from Amazon.in, which was my first purchase with them. IIRC, the seller was based in Bangalore and I had placed the Amazon fulfilled order on 18th September early morning and it was dispatched in the evening itself. 19th was a Saturday and 20th was a Sunday. Guess what? I had the item delivered on 21st September at 11.45 AM! I had estimated the product to arrive on 23th, while Amazon had promised delivery by 24th.

Now I have moved to Amazon.in for other car-related purchases also.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arunphilip (Post 3817342)

Yep... email received late at night. I suspect that you are right.

If so, I'd rather just be told that there is a delay and it will come the next day. That would save the bother of me complaining. But there is a can of worms: the guy can't be honest with his employer, and they, the courier, can't be honest with Amazon.

What a pity that business runs on lies these days. I blame the Americans. Although, ok, maybe India has its own branch of that tradition too ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3817476)

It has happened to me several times - status shows as "cannot locate", "incomplete address", "business closed", etc. It means that the guy ran out of time for the day. But recently, I had an experience where I had given up expecting delivery on that day and the guy knocked at 9:30PM. Yeh, amazon.

Quote:

What a pity that business runs on lies these days. I blame the Americans. Although, ok, maybe India has its own branch of that tradition too ;)

Actually, we Indians, blame every other ill in this country on Britishers (sic). :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom (Post 3817320)

It happened to my once. I think the problem is with BlueDart, they might be using this to get the good rating in their internal delivery SLA / Metrics (I can quote many example like this in corporate IT support teams in their ticket handling)

The Delhivery guys who were supposed to deliver a package seem to be relatives of Superman. They 'know' that no one is at home without even visiting , forget knocking!
Saturday the package was out for delivery, but "the door was locked". Well, yes. It would've been opened if only he had rung the bell!
Monday, again the package was out for delivery, and yet again the door was locked! What the hell!
Best part is, there is a total disconnect between the guys at the HQ and the local person who is supposed to make the delivery.. So much so that, they don't even have the person's number!! Wow!

Quote:

Originally Posted by r_devakumar (Post 3817989)

Its a regular practice for BlueDart in Bangalore. They take their own sweet time. I received my Credit card after one month that too after I escalated it to the Management. Else many of my packets are always delayed by 1 or 2 days. If I have any critical package i track it on the website and the moment the threshold for delivery exceeds I drop a mail to management and it gets delivered on priority in the morning.