Team-BHP - The Online Shopping Thread

Quote:

Originally Posted by shankar.balan (Post 3374297)

The only grey area that I see right now is that when you buy the item, will you get a "Stamped and Sealed Warranty" or do they expect you to use the bill as the warranty?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ms_mahu (Post 3374313)

Most of the time the warranty card would be intact for the products brought from these online market places, but it would not be having any stamp or date mentioned.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao (Post 3374503)

Most Indian appliance retailers (even brick & mortar stores), refuse to fill in and sign warranty cards. Even if you insist and they oblige, 'Original Bill' acts as warranty for them ultimately.

I actually don't understand the need for a separate warranty card. All it has is the name and address of the dealer and the purchase date -details which are available on the invoice anyway. Why not do away with this warranty card business altogether?

The only time I had to use warranty service in recent times was for my (Samsung) mobile phone. I took it to the service centre in Indira Nagar, and emailed the guy there the electronic invoice Croma sends you (if you have given them your email address). Nobody asked me for the warranty card at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shankar.balan (Post 3374297)

3. Or are these special prices like a sort of "loss leader" marketing investment being made by the "Marketplace Sites" themselves, in order to gain greater traction?

With my limited knowledge of e-commerce, I think the true bearers of this cost are the investors who have put in money in FK and the like. The money they pour in allows FK etc. to sell products at near or below cost. There is no doubt a lot of cost savings due to operational efficiencies like not having to maintain stores and parking lots in prime areas of major cities, much lower staffing need especially at skilled and middle-management levels etc.

I recently burnt my fingers on snapdeal.

I recommend that other members keep away from them.

I thought COD was failsafe so I bought a pair of driving lights a pioneer deck and a set of JBL speakers.

Once I opened the packages I found the items to be badly shop soiled and missing key components like wiring loom, remote etc. Ran around and bought the missing items locally and hooked up the system in my jeep only to find the deck couldn't play CDs and one of the speaker bridges were not working.

Tried to contact snapdeal, first was told to contact manufacturer for warranty. Then when I got aggressive I got assurances but no action. So after a week I lost patience and sold the stuff to a local car stereo shop for a throwaway price and purchased a car deck locally.

After 10 days Snapdeal writes back asking me to send the stuff back to them and they will verify the issue.

All 3 items were from different car accessory shops around Delhi based on stickers on the boxes.

This was my first online exp and Snapdeal really screwed me.

In a remote place where I live, online will be a great help if the sellers are genuine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by binand (Post 3374542)

Absolutely right. As an industry person I am hazarding a few comments. The investors need a good exit route and this can only be created by building a solid edifice of consumer habit.
This in turn feeds the need for various promotional efforts and "deals" and everything else.
Consumers in India are extremely smart. They won't just go and buy blindly- they will definitely do a price compare on excellent sites/services like Junglee.com before committing.
So in the majority of cases the "lowest price bidder" wins.
All the E Com companies have a long way to go to get into profits.
Amazon, the worlds largest and arguably best known E Com company, still has a financial graph which reads like an ECG! No Profit in sight many a time!
Ups and downs all the time!
Quarter to quarter they make profits and sometimes losses - this is because of their allegedly stated business strategy is to "crush competition and gain consumer loyalty, regardless of the cost".
Do the leading Indian E Com companies want to go the same way?
Do China and Japan's leading E Com companies, Alibaba/T Mall and Rakuten want to go the same way?

Whatever happens, it is very clear that there is one set of winners in all of this - the consumer! For that, Im happy!

Interested people might want to check out this highly insightful link;

http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/24/do...of-amazon-com/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dry Ice (Post 3373721)

I bought some filters from i2cworld and never had a problem. Maybe it's the value of stuff you order? I was actually surprised at the speed with which they delivered considering it was an overseas purchase and also, I got timely updates as well reg. the location of my package. Raccoon, would request you to share your experience.

PS: I think this discussion is more appropriate in the online shopping thread.

Value of my purchase was some 13k each. In short, they were everything rolled into one - unethical, unprofessional, liars, and v slow. Clearly said product has been purchased. Later the price of the product rose, so they simply canceled orders and openly sold items thru local listings at the much higher prices. Best part was they gave further lies by saying order was canceled by international seller (100% lies). Then they said canceled because of rise in $ prices (which has not happened), etc. They are really good at inventing lies. Also, many reports that they have removed accessories within packages that were to be delivered sealed by the international seller.

It is worth noting that the US seller which they blame has a 99% +ve rating!

BTW, its not just me - just see their ratings (very low!) and customer comments and you will find same and similar stories from hundreds of other buyers. Very clearly they are making good money by defrauding certain percentage of their buyers. I lost money and opportunity by trusting them. Never again. When buying from eBay, its best to buy from sellers with not less than 98% or so +ve ratings. Seller with such higher ratings will not want to spoil his ratings by resorting to such defrauding tactics and unprofessional service. However, it remains to be seen if eBay retains its ethics or eventually purges the -ve ratings of this reportedly influential/profitable seller.

Hence, if buying from GEB, at least consider avoiding i2c and buy thru iShop or the like, who deliver much faster and are more reliable.

^^^That is very true, but there is another aspect - not all customers are sensible or honest or objective. There will be that odd one out who will wrongly give negative rating for invalid reasons. That makes it very difficult not just for the seller but also other buyers who may base their decisions on ratings. I can quite imagine how difficult it would be to get 100% +ve ratings (with high sales) despite the seller being very good. So you gotta cut it some slack. Also, how many sellers do you find with 100% +ve ratings?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raccoon (Post 3375677)

Where did you get that info? Source please? This is the website: www.ishopinternational.com

Pl. google & you will get enough references on this topic. They are either same, or part of the same group of companies. I recently purchased a GEB item from Ebay.in from i2cworld seller, and the shipment was trackable from ishopinternational.com site (as well as iccworld.com)

From personal experience I know that online seller's bill with date of purchase and other details is enough to claim warranty.

Got following items repaired under warranty at respective service centers.

Samsung Ace which was bought on letsbuy.com which was later taken over by Flipkart.
Samsung Galaxy S2's software issue. Same was bought on FlipKart.
Kenstar hand blender. I had bought it on buytheprice.com.
Symphony cooler, which was bought from StarCJ.com.

That's all I remember right now!!

None of these items had warranty card furnished by the seller.