[ankitsharma]

While there are a lot of fakes I would say that there is good as well on Amazon and Flipkart.
I was duped last year when I ordered a Scuderia Ferrari chronograph watch whose actual cost was around 30K and Amazon was selling it for 15K. I did not believe it at first but then saw the global-store tag on the item and thought might be an import and due to lying in the warehouse Amazon must have been giving the discount. It was the first copy that I received. Confirmed by Helios guys @ Forum Mall , Koramangala.


So now I tread carefully and as much as possible buy from the store. Small value items are ordered online or if the item is not available on the stores.
I usually buy clothes offline. Recently started to buy phones as well. Got my 1+ from 1+ Store. Got better discounts than Amazon.

Still my trust is somehow maintained.

I have also noticed that Flipkart products are more genuine than Amazon ones.

Having said that I have ordered a lot of high value items online and rarely find issues. Some of them include ACs , TV , Music System , Gaming Laptop , Tools & Machinerey etc.

[Tucker48]

Electronics is one thing that I will buy from reputed e-commerce sites blindly. Even if one buys from a store and the product goes bad, the showroom guy will ask you to approach the service center.
And the electronics which sell for quite cheap prices online are definitely older models. The onus is on us to verify those things as we are getting a discount. In the end, it depends upon the customer whether he thinks if it's worth his time to do all that research.
Barring a few electronic products, most are cheaper to buy online as showrooms need to pay rent and salaries to salesmen.
More than 70% of sales from e-commerce comes from electronics, so it's safe to say that most of the products in terms of value are not fake.

[saket77]

^^Ankit: Never buy exotic/ Swiss watches online. There are such copies floating around that even the authorised dealers get confused. They even copy the movement makes. Always buy such watches from offline authorised dealer shops. You may still buy brands like Seiko/Casio/ citizen etc online because making first copies are not financially feasible but never buy anything online like say Tissot and anything over it.

[alikidwhy]

Contrary to popular opinion on the thread, I purchase just about everything on Amazon.

I'm not exactly an Amazon fanboy but I like it nonetheless since it's made life so simple add to it the benefits of being a prime member.

I purchase everything ranging from soap to Refrigerator, Microwave and Television and have so far been satisfied with most, if not all.

Very rarely has there been any problem and Amazon was good enough and resolved promptly.

A major Problem however is the Delivery executives who do not call and do not come and say I wasn't home and I have to contact amazon and wait for long.
Currently, trying to apply for their Amazon ICICI Card yet their Partner does not arrive, it has been 3 weeks.

[chaudh2s]

You have to have certain online shopping quotient to buy stuff safely via e commerce platforms.
For me Amazon just means 2 sellers, Narayan Murthys cloudtail and Appario retail. All others are blocked. Am the earlist subscriber of their super value day sales and in the process have saved at least a lakh if not more over many years of grocery shopping now. All stuff from cloudtail. I dont even remember now, when I last visited Big bazar or More or Easy day for grocery shopping.
Many years ago I bought a Samsung AC from Snapdeal and that AC is the best performing AC I have in my home of the 4 AC's that I have. So, luckily for me online shopping has worked out to be quite good.

[The Rationalist]

I have mostly had good experiences from Amazon, bought iPhone, Oneplus phones from Amazon. Have ordered Oneplus Nord also now. Generally avoid buying things like AC, Fridge, Washing machine as I would like to see it in person and they are once in 10 year or so purchases and have some relative working with a big chain, so can mostly get the cheapest price matching online. Same for foot wear as the fi may not be right, but have bought cheap flip flops. One thing to avoid from Amazon would be perfumes which can be fake. The number of things you can find on Amazon is mind boggling, could find some vitamins and supplements from US at reasonable prices. As Vid has pointed Cloudtail and Appario are safe bets. I usually buy from sellers with more than 80% positive ratings only.

[hydraulicsteer]

Originally Posted by GTO

Do NOT buy engine oils, detailing stuff, creams, shampoos etc. on Amazon.

Engine oils like Shell,Servo can be bought from the petrol pumps but other brands like Mobil, Caltex, Castrols are flooded with duplicates offline as well.

Same with authentic detailing products. I am in NCR and i do not trust the car parts/accessories dealers selling detailing items on authenticity. Never been to a 3M center, do they sell detailing products off the shelf?

[rkv_2401]

We have been purchasing things on Amazon/Flipkart since early 2013. So far, it's been pretty smooth sailing. If something is a duplicate item/item of poor quality, you can always exchange or return it(had to exchange a Groot pen stand I'd bought as a gift last year).

I've always bought electronics on Amazon or Flipkart, as they are cheaper and offer more variety than what can be found in the neighbourhood stores. I've also found 'exotic' items(adapters for discontinued premium devices, specific cables or adapters that are hard to find in brick and mortar stores, computer parts) available that we, at times, could not even find in the US! My dad had been searching for a replacement power adapter for our Surface Pro 2 for the last 3 or 4 years and eventually gave up on it(after a couple of imported adapters failed in quick succession). I bought one for 900Rs. on Amazon and it's been working just fine since then.

I bought my Xbox One S on Amazon last year, along with 4 or 5 phones and a laptop over the last 4 years. I bought both of my iPhones on Flipkart. So far, we haven't faced any major problem with any of the phones/laptops/electronics we've bought online since late 2013(yes, I went back through my order history just to find the first thing we bought online xD)

[greenhorn]

I miss eBay India. eBay had a mature marketplace model for smaller sellers with strong tools and processes because the assumption by default was that everything is a fake, and sellers put in a lot Of effort to prove that their products were genuine, and if they did something funny, eBay would come down heavily on them. On eBay you looked at seller ratings and feedback before choosing a seller, while Amazon makes it opaque behind a buy box. Compared to that everyone assumes Amazon is reliable when their seller management is one giant free for all.

[sagarpadaki]

Originally Posted by greenhorn

I miss eBay India. eBay had a mature marketplace model for smaller sellers with strong tools and processes because the assumption by default was that everything is a fake, and sellers put in a lot Of effort to prove that their products were genuine, and if they did something funny, eBay would come down heavily on them. On eBay you looked at seller ratings and feedback before choosing a seller, while Amazon makes it opaque behind a buy box. Compared to that everyone assumes Amazon is reliable when their seller management is one giant free for all.

Agree. Also, i found some really nifty items on eBay IN that i could not find anywhere else. There was this seller who used to sell a plethora of items sold mainly in US markets. Maybe they were market seconds or had slight defects that made them not suitable to be sold in the intended market. All these were sold at very reasonable price and i got some amazing products at a steal price! I miss that seller the most!

[chinkara]

Let me bring a slightly different perspective.
I have worked on the process side with an automotive consumable player and a consumer electronics player.
Most large companies these days have online channel managers. They are worried about brand reputation and channel conflict. So, the moment they see a seller advertising their product who they cannot trace (i.e, not an authorized distributor / reseller), they flag it to the e-commerce sites as a possible fake. The e-com sites are actually keen to have a Castrol or a Philips directly associated with them, so generally the response is prompt. And all this is generally done using web crawling, so it is pretty efficient. In fact we have such a tool ourselves.
So the possibility of getting a spurious Samsung is, I would argue, pretty small. Sure, you can get a damaged or returned item (which you can get in a store as well), but spurious? And returns are generally easier online than offline.

Also, about reviews. There are whole troll armies which try to put down competing brands / sellers. So I am reluctant to believe anything which has less than 60-70 reviews. I also read the comments in text to gauge if they seem genuine.

Finally, agree about eBay. I got some pretty decent stuff from small sellers there.

[dipdawiz]

Originally Posted by mvadg

I've also decided I will not buy shoes from Amazon, one pair fit well, another one supposedly of the same size did not suit me.

Surprisingly for last 5 years I am buying shoes completely online from Amazon or Myntra (and previously Jabong)

The thing is I need size 11 and most of the brands' offline shops do not keep the size and I always used to buy something that I did not like 100%.

Now, I go to shop, try out the no 10 size and check if I like it, and it would always be available online with size 11 and cheaper. So far I bought 6 pairs of shoes of different types - sports, casual, floaters, moccasins. Never got a low quality product yet (both Amazon and Myntra). Of course all were branded like Lee Cooper, Hush Puppies, Nike, Reebok etc.

[Mr.Perera]

Since I worked with Amazon for few years and understand the whole process, I can completely agree that Amazon never wants to dupe the customer and an unhappy customer is the last thing they want. The problem comes when some seller start selling low quality/ duplicate items through the platform. Considering the HUGE amount of orders, it is very difficult for Amazon to monitor each and every order. Especially it was a daily thing to remove some third party seller from the platform when we used to find they are sending duplicate items to customers. Hence it is always better to order through reputed sellers like Cloudtail. FBA sellers need to follow so many rules and procedures rather than Third party sellers. Also item return/replacement from an FBA seller is much easier for the customer. One thing we have noticed is some customers try to con the company saying that they have received no goods, or fake goods or another item. What actually happens is the customer might order for an original product, take the item, and replace it with a similar item and apply for a refund. Also in the above case the same item gets back to the Amazon warehouse and the person there will check for any physical damage, repack it and might put back the same item back to the bin. And when some other customer orders the same item, he might get that same fake item. And this cycle keeps going until it gets flagged at some point. There are teams who identify such customers who keeps ordering and returning most of the time and will subsequently flag such people from the platform. One bitter experience I had was when I ordered a vaccum cleaner from Cloudtail and upon receiving I found that the item had already been used and found dust and hair in the dust bag even before my use ! A perfect example of someone using it for 29 days and returning back the item. Poor chap at warehouse repacked it and sent it back to me. So there are many loopholes in the system. But the customer service team is always there to help you and give a solution.

[revvharder]

*Touchwood* My experience so far has been great with Amazon and pleasant with Flipkart. Haven't received a counterfeit product from either of them though recently had purchased a water geyser, when I opened the packing it was neatly packed but the geyser had a few scratches here and there indicating that the product was a used/returned one further got the warranty card with December 2019 stamped. So I understood most probably the product was used by someone but it did not matter to me, so I fitted and checked the geyser if the piece was defective but it wasn't. So I notified Amazon customer care regarding this, they were ready to replace the piece but I didn't bother as the piece was working fine and for warranty they told the bill would suffice.

[gopalnt]

I generally don't buy very high value items online. I don't even buy clothes online as much as possible. The pleasure of going to different shops in a mall, trying out different clothes cannot be achieved online. But if I have to buy online, this is what I follow.

1. Amazon is my first preference
2. Buy from Cloudtail
3. Product rating should be 4+
4. If buying from from another seller, then that seller's rating should be 4+
5. Minimum reviews should be 25
6. Amazon Prime preferred