Friday, October 10, 2008

India Times Shopping woes

I saw an almost attractive offer in Times of India paper. The offer was for a chord-less telephone with caller-id, which costs Rs. 1999+180 delivery charge. Without having any second thoughts, we called up and booked for the phone.

We received the phone after 10 days of booking. At first look, the phone looked alright. There is one rule about this "home delivered products", there is always some hidden damages! We checked again to see charger adapter broken and caller-id not working.

We placed a replacement order. Packing back the product is bit of a pain. We had to take a printout of complaint letter too to place it in the box(yeah, tele-shopping, atleast in India Times, is not for computer illiterates!). The product was collected from our house in a days time. The replaced product was received in next 10 days.

This time we were not able to spot any damages. It was almost perfect. But the caller-id was still not working! This was suppose to be a caller-id phone. And caller-id cannot be faulty in both the deliveries. Suspecting false product delivery, we called up the customer support again, and they were not able to solve the problem themselves. They inturn gave the vendor customer care number.

We called up the phones vendor and notified him about the issue. After hearing his reply, we were a bit shocked. All he said was, we need to purchase an extra equipment(which will burn another 300 bucks from our pocket) for the caller-id to work! This was suppose to be a caller-id phone and no where in the Times of India advertisement it is mentioned that we need to buy this device. Being pissed and cheated, we called up the India time support again and asked them to take back the product.

We had to place a refund order for this, which we did. The product was taken from our house the very next day and was promised the refund within 7 days of receipt of the product. Ten days passed, no refund was sent. We called up the support yet again and they promised(again) the refund will be dispatched within ten days.

After a long wait, i received the below mail from India times support. (Issues quoted in red)

Dear $order.userFirstName userLastName [suppose to be my name, instead its some variable name]

We wish to inform you that we have processed refund against
Order No.: $order.orderNumber sub order number
$suborder.subOrderNumber $suborder.itemName
[suppose to be my order and sub order numbers]

.................
.............
.................

With Warm Regards
Customer Service


Seeing the pathetic condition of their support, i decided to shoot a mail back to them to tell these issues. I had to use their grievances page. I drafted the content and sent it. At first try, the session got expired! I did not loose hope, started a fresh session, and sent it again. This time, i got the following error!

Exception occured: java.io.FileNotFoundException: http://ecomm.indiatimes.com/EncryptionUtility.jsp?TN=322696&Key=20&Op=1

The jsp file for some validation was missing in their server!! Do they atleast care to test these things? I pretty much know they dont test the products they send to their customers. They could have atleast tested the products they and their customers use.

I would never buy any products again from India Times Shopping. A lesson well learnt, again!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Add me into the victims list of Indiatimes. This happened about 3 years back. I placed an order (some gift to present it to my friend). After 10 days, they said it is not in stock and it took about 3 months to refund my money back to my card.

I haven't using Indiatimes shopping since them.

One of the worst customer support have ever seen and they are following the same trend till now.

-Vijay-

Sridhar said...

vijay, i must say i am luckier than you then! i got my refund today(a month after we ordered it). But yeah, only after making several calls!

Anonymous said...

I learned 1 thing from you never look for IndiaTimes site for shopping.

iToon said...

Better they change the name to 'IndiaBADTimesShopping'

PG said...

I believe most of the online shopping sites in India pretty much offer such shitty service.

I remember my first experience with rediff shopping. I wanted to try rediff shopping becos one of my friend said its pretty cool. I ordered a pair of jeans through them and i gave them the right size and i wasted abt 2 hrs trying to find the right color and size and it was a pay when u get kinda service( oh yeah India was so backward in e-payment or e-commerce back then) and when i got the package i was shocked to see it was just a little longer than my sports shorts and they call it a normal pair of jeans.

I am disappointed to know the condition is still the same with online shopping in India.

Anonymous said...

India times shoppping places beautiful but misleading advts.in Times of India and trap innocent customers. They are the least concerned about complaints or after sales service. I request all concerned to take up the issue with the consumer Forums, say CERS, Ahmedabad, to find its ligivcal ends through consaumer protcetion Act and the MRTP act for UNFAIR TRADER PRACTICES and DEFICIENCY IN SERVICE.

Anonymous said...

FRAUDULENT. You purchase a product. They charge your credit card. A day later, they tell you they will not process the order and because the amount is less than 2000 rupees (~$40 in U.S. currency), they will not credit the card back but instead will issue you a gift certificate. When you complain, they refuse to budge on their position.

Unknown said...

Am Madan, Add me into victims of Indiatimes, i ordered Sony cybershot camera, Indiatimes have delivered camera in time but there is no memory card inside the gift pack. Now Memory card purchase is an extra charge for me. They have not mentioned this in the paper Ad(hided). Now my cost of purchase in Inidatimes became more than the cost of market price. So dont go for Indiatimes online shopping

Anonymous said...

Beware Indiatimes Shopping & Times Of India Company -Cheater & Fraud - Big Shame

I booked my order for Impact Machine with 24Pcs Tool Kit & 13Pcs Drill Bits through Indiatimes shopping.

My order No Was 200910291151-413

I feel very bed when i received Order delivery there are missing items which India times shopping agreed to send while taking order.

i don't know why this big Brand Times of India is doing this cheating ?

i received in box is Impact Machine With 24Pcs Tool Kit only.

there is no 13Pcs Drill Bits and Free Indiatimes GC of Rs.500/-.

I tried to contact around 10 times on phone they are not responding and every time keeping my call on hold when i am asking about missing items.

Beware Indiatimes Shopping & Times Of India-Cheater & Fraud - Big Shame

Thanks & Regards ,

Rajeev Kumar

Ashutosh Kumar Verma said...

I have ordered a mobile phone about 20-21 sep 2009 and made payment by ICICI credit card of amound 3149/-. The order no. is 126039520090901. Immediately after 3-4 days I have cancelled the order and got the cancellation No 1248355 by phone. At that time they have committed to refund the amount within 6 working days. But today on 24-11-09 also I have not received the refund to my credit card account. In between I have made so may calls to them at their customer complaint no. 09998308888 which were atttended after 15-20 minutes every time and got a complain reg. No. 7694 dt. 26/10/09, 23428 dt 23/11/09 but till now the amound was not refunded. Now I am thinking to make a complain in consumer forum against them. The entire team of Indiatimes are fraud. Pls don't purchase any item from them

Bhanu said...

They idiots,

i put two orders for them. one i looked and see the status as out of stock, although amount was deducted immediately, the other first mentioned as shipped now shown as canceled. who they think they are. thugs at the street corner. what sort of ready made messages is affixed below. they piece of shits, how come i get to expect to enjoy a wonderful shopping experience when they cannot even meet smallest commitments from their part. they piece of shits, as for ideas, they get that from people running their newspaper and jain group, the enterprises behind this bullshit if thats the case. when did they started running the country, the republic of india. there may be people who may be thinking they people are great. they do nonsense, and send in english ready made messages to make up for that. shameless a**holes. they keep the money. they shameless a**holes. i committed to get something. not to bear nonsense from they for nothing. they make me come to their website, and offer a product, take money, make me wait for five to ten days, only to say, what? india is the only country where any nonsense can be accommodated. still they will send they the reply and ask for comments (because their IQ as per international survey is well below that of a counterpart who may be doing this sort things on smaller scale but still on a better way in diff. part of the world) . they piece of shits, take care. they a** holes. dont tell after 5 to 10 days what they are up to. take this to court. make a complain for use of obscene words and send me to jail. my proper name and address can be faxed to them, just send a court order, something seen common in india where one get to arrest a petty thief involved with Rs.10, but may be giving protection to matters involving higher amounts (rights of all, privileges of few). God forbid them big times a**holes still in business fooling countless number of people of their hard earned for nothing. their website is a mess, their attitude even more messier than the website. still too proud. a** holes. take a mirror. and see what this means to biggest a**hole running the operation, the guy at top, the stupid, who cannot even see, what his company is doing. they will do same thing to him also ( take money from him, and tell him ten days after that his order is canceled- they piece of shit, they owe more to a customer than to the guy at top). then for what the they maintain this website.

Roshan Shah said...

Add me to a dissatisfied customer. 9 days after placing an order and sending few reminders, I did not get anything. Government should Ban THIS Site and put Indiatime owners behind the bar for online fraud!

Order # 112196790 placed on 9th Feb.

Customer service is non existent.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Why this site is not banned even after so many complaints!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.