Flipkart bungling of order

a_s_r

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Here's my story of frustration with a Flipkart order for a LED TV that was placed on Oct 6, the Big Billion Day.
To follow up the order and to keep record of the status, I had sent quite a few mails to FK and many calls to their customer service. It has been a harrowing experience to say the least.

Towards the end, FK automatically cancelled the order without checking with me, citing customer not reachable!

A search of twitter tells me Im not the only one who faced this kind of order cancellation after so many days.

Here's the history of the order, which is a long post and also indicates the amount of time I wasted in following up the order!

[6-Oct, Mon]. Order is placed on 6th October morning before 9 am, the big billion day. Delivery is promised on 6th October evening, 7 pm. I rush home from office expecting the delivery of the item, but there is no update on the status.

[7-Oct, Tue]. I get an update that order delivery is delayed by 5 days to 11-Oct-2014.

[10-Oct, Fri] I am not sure if the item will get delivered on 11th Oct as I don't see the item getting dispatched from seller warehouse in the status. I call FK in the evening to cross check that I will get the delivery on 11-Oct. The customer service assures that I will get the item on 11th itself!

[11-Oct, Sat] I get a message indicating that the item is delayed by 2 to 3 days! I called the customer service again. He says the order has been shipped and it will take some time.

[12-Oct, Sun]: I check the status and surprised that the item was in Bangalore on 11th Oct morning itself! FK could have delivered the item on the promised day of Saturday itself, but never did!
When I call the Ekart service, Im told that they cannot deliver today as it is a holiday. Later, I see in twitter that delivery is happening on Sundays.

So, I made the call to customer service again to check whether EKart is lying on the holiday part!!

I get a SMS at 4.30 pm saying that order is out of delivery, keep your old TV ready for the exchange, and the delivery will happen by 7 pm.

I send a mail at night to customer service and requests them to be proactive enough to call me and check if I will be at home to collect the delivery.

[13-Oct, Mon]:
I see a missed call that came at 11.17 pm on Sunday night to my mobile and I see the following status for my order.
Sun, 12th Oct
02:52 am
Bangalore Hub,Bengaluru
Undelivered due to no response from customer
They expect the customer to do a night out expecting that the delivery that was promised at 7 pm will come.

Anyway, I got a call at 9.30 am from the courier guy and I told him clearly that I was in office and will be home by 6 pm. Please deliver it after 6 pm.

I reached home before 6 pm and gave a call to the courier guy. He wanted to postpone the delivery by one day as the driver is not "obeying him" and is forcefully driving back to the warehouse! In between he also tried to tell me that I requested for a delivery between 11 am to 1 pm, which I never did.

Then I get the below mail from FK.

"We tried to deliver the following items in your Order today but looks like you were not available to collect it. Nothing to worry about though, we will be reattempting delivery of your items."

[14th Oct, Tue]:

Status is "Delivery expected at 7:00 pm - 11:59 pm on Tue, 14th Oct'14".
When I call the customer service at night, he says delivery will not be done as "System is loaded"! But it will be done by tomorrow, for sure.

[15-Oct, Wed]:
I got a call from a customer service person at 1pm and gets the assurance that I will get the TV delivered on 15th itself.
I call FK again after 4 pm to check the status as I didn't get any call from the courier service on the time of delivery. The person attending the call confirms that mail has gone to delivery guys to deliver the item today.
I call FK at 8 pm. Customer Service Executive told me to be patient till end of the day and that I can raise a complaint if I don't get it.
At 9.56 pm, I get a SMS saying that the order is cancelled on my request, while I had never initiated any cancellation request. This was similar to the earlier status noted by FK that I requested for postponement of the delivery to a different day, which I never did. On getting the SMS mentioning the "cancellation", I immediately called FK and told them that I never placed the cancellation order. The person attending the call raises a complaint on my behalf.

[16-Oct]
11 am: I get a call from a person, who introduced himself as head of South India region for some department, and promised resolution of the issue and that my delivery will be done today.
11.43 am: I get a SMS saying cancellation done and refund is ongoing!
12 am: I talk to the head again saying that I'm thoroughly confused.
12.15 pm: I get a call from another guy,Mr. A to whom I repeat the entire story on the delivery. He says that the courier guy tried calling me at 9 pm yesterday and I didn't answer his call, which was an absolute lie! Afterwards, the courier guy went ahead and cancelled my order, without talking to me! According to Mr. A, this should have never happened as customer confirmation is required for cancellation of the order
12.30 pm: The head calls me and says that since refund is initiated, please place a fresh order and I will get the difference amount between the current price and Oct 6 in my wallet.
12.38 pm: Mr. A calls me, but he has no idea that the head talked to me about refund to my wallet. He collected Mr. As number and says he will check on the exact steps and call me back. No call came from the head or Mr. A afterwards!

Calls to the head are not picked up and there is no response to my SMS as well.

Meanwhile, I had tweeted to FK customer service as well on my order.

[17-Oct]
I get a call from a lady who says cancellation is ongoing and whether Im fine with the refund. I ask her if she has gone through all my mails to FK before asking me whether Im fine with the cancellation. She says shell check and get back to me! And thats where it stands.
 
This has become common with FK these days. They are going down pretty fast. We have faced similar situation as a seller as well. They keep telling that you did this or that when we dint. We raise complain that ekart hasn't picked the item and customer service keeps asking us for manifest signed by pickup guy! And just as you said right hand has no idea what left hand is doing. Very very frustating dealing with them.

Very sad that the one Indian company which showed so much promise is going like this.
 
The biggest shocker for me was that the order was cancelled without contacting me... which is a huge gap in the process.

Also strange that they could not sort out the delivery process so many days after Oct 6, where the number of orders would have come down a lot compared to Oct 6.

In one of the calls with the customer service, they asked me to contact EKart for the status of the order... as if they don't have the contact number to make a call and check the status.
 
Maybe they did not have the TV at the advertised price and played through the whole charade. Btw the TV set must have been heavily discounted and they may have pulled this on several customers and will eventually give away the differential to a few ppl. I once remember an airtel bill (in early days) containing an erroneous charge of Rs 50 or 100 which when pointed out to them they promptly removed but think of the 90pct of the people who did not verify the bill in detail and had paid the same. (the charge had appeared by mistake in at least for a good no of people /flats in our society)
 
I have checked with a few FK delivery guys about the Big Billion day sale, they told most of the things ordered on that day were canceled.
 
Apart from Flipkart, their new courier partners - DELHIVERY are absolutely pathetic...order has been sitting in Bangalore for 5 days now. Everyday they keep telling me it will be delivered (they might as well have an automated message):mad:
 
Maybe they did not have the TV at the advertised price and played through the whole charade. Btw the TV set must have been heavily discounted and they may have pulled this on several customers and will eventually give away the differential to a few ppl. I once remember an airtel bill (in early days) containing an erroneous charge of Rs 50 or 100 which when pointed out to them they promptly removed but think of the 90pct of the people who did not verify the bill in detail and had paid the same. (the charge had appeared by mistake in at least for a good no of people /flats in our society)

The TV was heavily discounted. Maybe "the head" who promised to credit the difference amount to my wallet realised it later and decided to keep quiet. ;)
 
There has been a twist in the status of this order. FK placed another order on COD for the same price as Big billion day, strangely I didn't get any intimation through SMS or mail that the order was placed. I got a SMS yesterday that the TV will be delivered and it got delivered yesterday itself. :)

FK still needs to better it's delivery mechanism, but I guess all's well that ends well.
 
I bought a 47" LG LED 3D TV before Diwali from Flipkart and paid full amount through credit card. Meant to be delivered on 21st October. I have been following up with them everyday and the standard answer is that it will be resolved in 24-48 hours. Sick and tired of following up with them. Wrote them a email with a copy to Sachin Bansal. No reply so far.

Yesterday their customer service rep told me over phone that they do not have TV in stock and that they are trying to procure and send to Bangalore warehouse for delivery to me. At this rate looks like I am going to be forced to wait another 10 days easily.

Flipkart have a long way to go in getting their act right on logistics and customer service. They right now appear like a shady trader in comparison to Amazon. I have moved most of my purchases to Amazon and they are brilliant.

Cheers.
 
Try to get support from twitter account of flipkart support. The response was better compared to mails.
 
I am from nasik .I don't understand why flipkart not getting any currier partner to deliver in nasik.any item I choose I get the message that this item cannot be delivered at your place.i wrote them many times but they are just sitting duck.after all nasik is big place and I
am getting materials from other e commerce web sites.
 
Today got a message from Flipkart that my TV is finally shipped. Hoping to get delivery today or tomorrow. To be fair, it is not a bad deal from a price standpoint.
 
Yes price point of view definitely but if you look at the credentials of the company, in my view it is viewed when they offer something less compared to the competitors and how they honour that commitment. This is where the ecommerce companies in India differ compared to US.
Anyway congrats and hope it gets delivered to your satisfactiion :)
 
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