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It has a turquoise star and it says top rated seller and has 99.5% postive feedback. Is this all hosh-posh or actually true? I don't understand any of this.

Guys !! need suggestions.

-Bought an OCZ SSD from flipkart ~ 1.2 years ago (Costing 10800/-), with 3 years warranty.
-Device failed in < 9 months.
-Last Oct, Couldn't find any info on service centers. Checked with Flipkart. got a response after couple of weeks, with the detailed service center address.
- Submitted the drive on Dec 3rd.
- After a month of daily follow up's, Service center says, cant repair. Credit note will be issued for 6500 /-
- Asked for a written statement that, credit note will be given only for 6500 for xxx reasons.
- Now they started coming up with outlandish reasons. Manager is on leave, system crashed, Service center is being cleaned for one week, etc etc.
- Followed up with Flipkart on the same. They said they cant help.

Now, the service center boy calls me and says, he cant give a credit note too. The device will be returned to me.

I really do not understand what the hell is going on. Why am i being troubled from the past 4+ months, for a damn hard disk.

Do we have any system in place, which can address these issues? Why the seller is not taking any responsibility when they say that they are the only importers of this brand. (At the time of purchase, they were the only one.) :Frustrati
Any advice/suggestions on how i could proceed ?

Any advice in this regard is highly appreciated.

Don't buy anything from a seller below 98% positive feedback. Also check his recent feedback. Always prefer the seller who does many dealings per day. As for electronic items always check if it has manufacturer warranty. Items like mobiles have low price there as mostly are sold as seller warranty which is of no use.
In any case its protected by paisapay so you will get the refund if product isn't as per expectation.

AFAIK, the delivery boy would not allow you to open the package before payment most of the times, as it becomes their responsibility once the package is opened. You cannot return it after opening, but before opening. I know it sounds stupid but that's the situation I faced. It may be different with different companies.

+1. I received two parcels from snapdeal last week. I was worried of transit damage or wrong product shipped as it was my first purchase from Snapdeal. I asked the courier boy if I can open the packages before making the payment but he said no. I had to pay the value. After opening the package, I found that one package contained a wrong product.:Frustrati

The package has been shipped back to snapdeal for replacement.

Couple of times, when I placed orders thru Shop Clues, the product was NEVER delivered. Once the courier guys opened the package and left it like that and I declined to take delivery of the stuff citing "possible damages" by them. The payment was taken but. It does NOT have any protection like eBay where we can block the amount if delivery is NOT done. On top of it, my emails were never replied to nor I could get thru the customer care numbers.

Left a very bitter taste though the damage was less than Rs. 300/-.

Such sites can bring in a lot of negative sentiments about online shopping for first timers. Since I have used better services like eBay / Flipkart, I would still go ahead and do online shopping; but NOT with Shop Clues.

Would I recommend Shop Clues to anyone - NO !!!

Well I guess it depends on the courier guy perhaps. I ordered quite a few things from Jabong during the GOSF and following that too. The parcels that I got shipped to Vadodara: I opened them, tried the shoes and even returned a couple of products that I felt had a defect and kept the rest. There were no hassles at all.
Also got 3 parcels delivered to delhi. Amongst these 2 of them the courier guy refused to allow opening them whereas the third one I again opened and checked and only then paid and delivery chap did not make any fuss about it. So I am not sure how does this work.

Thanks for the note of caution. I agree - ShopClues is a fraud website. No one should ever order anything from them even if it is cheaper. There is no guarantee that you will get your stuff. I got it a few times but at times when it was delayed - there was no re-dressal method, no customer care at all. better pay 5-10% extra and stick to reliable players like SnapDeal, ebay and Flipkart!

In eBay, some sellers very specifically state that COD items SHOULD be checked and payment made only there after. If this is NOT mentioned, then you probably should email the seller and get a confirmation if payment could be made after checking. In such cases, you could call them up if the delivery guys do NOT let you open the package before payment.

How can a person pay when they don't know what they have got!

Take the initiative: just do the checking, and then the paying!

Flipkart doesn't allow it. If something is wrong then you need to send it back separately and not with the guy who got it. The cash on delivery is take the parcel and pay whether or not it is the right item or not.

I have been using Shopclues quite regularly since its inception.

I have never ordered expensive stuff like electronics and all, but usually stick to the Deal items and Sunday Flea Market items. The discounts are very good but the delivery times are higher compared to Flipkart/Amazon. They do not seem to be a very professionally managed enterprise, hence its better to stick to low value products and those which you don't require urgently, and you will be ok.

I recently bought a 2.5 feet Teddy bear and it cost me only some 400 bucks including shipping. The same thing is available for > 1500 bucks in offline stores. So the discounts are quite good.

+1
I've used shopclues numerous times from it's inception (more than 30 times maybe). Bought cheap items as well as items worth 5-6K (phone) from them. Never faced a problem. Quick delivery, never received any damaged item. No reason to contact customer support yet so don't know how good they are!!

Snapdeal is great so far too. Never faced any problem. Best part of them is they offer COD delivery free of cost for most of the items. So, I try to avail them. Recently placed an order for a Morphy Richards coffee maker worth Rs. 8.5K. Order placed on 1st Feb, item shipped on 3rd, got delivery on 11th. Shipped through surface mode as the item was heavy 9kg. Assure delivery date was 12th :). The item was in original box with an import date of Aug 2013 and duly filled in and stamped warranty card. Contacted customer support regarding this order for change of shipping address after placing the order. They were prompt and effective.

But like most of the sites a no. of sellers sell their stuff through Shopclues, snapdeal, amazon, ebay etc. Some of the sellers may be fraud. So, ALWAYS check sellers history before placing the order. If an item listed by a reputable seller costs Rs 100 more compared to a unknown seller I'll buy from the reputable seller.

re checking the contents before paying COD...
Well, thinking about it, I suppose it could open a whole can of worms as to what was in the parcel and what was not.

+2 :-)

I too have 'mostly' restricted myself to less expensive items except for a couple. My order history in shopclues goes a little above 3 pages. So far the going has been good. Never missed a delivery.
That said, I would say the quality of the daily deal items (where no brand is specifed or some niche items) is below par. So there is very much a chance that some items are fake. The point I want to make here is more with respect to fulfillment of delivery which has been positive- through out the last 2 years!

Snapdeal i had a bad start with the first order itself delivering a damaged product. I didnt care to return as I could not source or had seen similar earlier (small wooden laptop table kind) at the price point. I managed to use some tapes and gave thums up to functionality rather than aesthetics.

Ebay-my id dates back to baazee days and value of buying extend from 1 to 25000 and like but the no. of trades (both buy and sell) havent exceeded say 35- 40 across multiple ids including India and US websites. Never missed a delivery. Never had to return. So I think I have been rather lucky and cautious in selecting my sellers.

Other sites where I had
"+": jabong, yebhi, tradus, amazon (ind+US), buy,
"-": indiatimes (high delivery time), hs18 (hassle hassle)

Moreover 98% of my orders in all the above sites were pre-paid and not COD.

Cheers!