Snapdeal- highly competitive price but uncertain service

manzb

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I have been a regular e-com guy and has been doing online purchases for many years now. Starting from Indiatimes, ebay, Jabong, Myntra, Yebhi, infibeam, Flipkart and Snapdeal. Considering that nowadays the e-com is growing at a rapid pace, I would like to discuss one of the major players as of now which is Snapdeal.

They started of as someone who provided good coupon deals for various services and restaurants. But since last 2 years or so they began as a market place for online sellers (same as ebay model). From the beginning I have been buying goods from them but there are serious lapses in their services, out of which a major one is not honoring the online deal and confirming the same after 2/3 weeks that it is cancelled. Interestingly most of the time product is re-listed at a higher price and is available for buy. This is specially true where the product is discounted to a level which is too good to be true.

Initially I ordered for few items (I think 8 or 10), out of which 2/3 items were cancelled after 2/3 weeks citing non-availability (in this case they showed it out of stock on the website). Luckily my order was CoD.

Next I read someone from this forum ordered a TV which was priced on other site and outside store at 1.4 to 1.5 lacs, but Snapdeal showed a price of 85K or so. When he ordered they promptly cancelled the order saying that it is out of stock and the product was relisted at the higher price of 1.4 lacs or so.

Then 10/12 days before I ordered a WI-FI router (3G/4G) from TPlink (MR3420) as the price was really too good, as against the best price of 2584 at Flipkart, they were offering at 2210. I ordered it and paid online as well, they have been postponing the shipping and yesterday they confirmed me that it is cancelled as it is not available. The best part is that they have re-listed it at a higher price of 2375. That is a really unprofessional service from Snapdeal. Now I am stuck as this time I paid online and though they have sent me a confirmation mail saying that it will credited back to my A/c, still this kind of issues does not help in instilling confidence.

Few good things as well -

  1. They are usually the lowest priced for many products.:clapping:
  2. After Flipkart decided to go out of the consumer electronics (like TVs, fridge etc) business last year, which is really unfortunate, they are the only better alternative to infibeam (only other major player of consumer electronics). This helps us to get a competitive prices for such products. Though I don't advocate buying such products online, still for us it gives a better indication of the price to which we can negotiate with out neighbourhood stores.:signthankspin:
  3. I have ordered many products from their site, which were successfully delivered. Though the packaging is not upto the mark and usually takes 3-5 days and sometimes even upto 10 days or so.:mad:
  4. Some of the excellent deal was like the 50% off on movies which concluded recently.:thumbsup::licklips:
  5. I ordered one Nikon DSLR (CoD) and they delivered it fine, but out of all the items a free 4GB card was missing. When registered a complaint to the CC, they gave me a Snapdeal cash worth Rs 284/- as compensation, which is the approx price of the card. I really appreciate that. I never had to follow up for that. Thye just asked my acceptance, which is via return mail and it reflected on my Snapdeal A/C.:thumbsup:

So hope they pulls up the socks and starts to learn from the major online stores like Amazon or others to honor all the deals they have agreed, even though, it is their mistake.

Now the question is whether I will continue to buy from them - the answer is yes, but if I would like to get it from Flipkart if the prices are similar or even a small premium as they are more reliable so far. Future purchases are likely to be more CoD, to be on the safer side. They are yet to build that confidence in me when I can pay them (online) blindly.

Request other also to share their experience so that online community gets benefited from the same.
 
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I bought a Dual band router from snapdeal on 22nd July (prepaid by credit card). Shipping date was on or before 25th July.

On 25th evening, I got an email "We'd like to inform you that due to certain unexpected circumstances, the above mentioned order will be delayed by 3 business days."

After that no reply. when I contacted them, they replied "your order is getting delayed by a couple of days due to high demand from valuable customers such as you."

On 1st August, they cancelled my order because of no stock (product was still listed on their website).

What a waste of 10 days.

My suggestion, snapdeal might be good for restaurant deals but not for products. Stay away.
 
Poor attitude towards customers and this will not pay them long term. The message that Customer is King should percolate down from the top.
 
So hope they pulls up the socks and starts to learn from the major online stores like Amazon or others to honor all the deals they have agreed, even though, it is their mistake.

In US it is criminal offense to not to honor an order once it is accepted at a certain price. Therefore there have been instances, where things were posted up to 98% below actual price and retailers had to honor all the orders placed. There is no such law in India or I guess nobody is implementing them, which creates this issue.

I feel these guys try harming each other buy first keying a low price to get the customer in and then rejecting their orders.
 
In US it is criminal offense to not to honor an order once it is accepted at a certain price. Therefore there have been instances, where things were posted up to 98% below actual price and retailers had to honor all the orders placed. There is no such law in India or I guess nobody is implementing them, which creates this issue.

I feel these guys try harming each other buy first keying a low price to get the customer in and then rejecting their orders.

I sincerely hope India also gets something similar. Here sometime such e-com retailer goes to the other extreme of refunding the original amount itself. That's a serious crime, is a daylight robbery. Hope things goes for better in the future and our online guys also starts behaving in a matured way like overseas counterparts.

Frankly speaking, sometime it is so easy to order online, like Movies, as you can browse at your leisure time for the movie you might be interested in (reading reviews etc) & also searching for the best deal. Similarly for small denomination items like Memory card etc can be bought at ease without needing to go to the crowded market place and comparing prices/ negotiating etc.
 
I have not bought any large items online, but have bought books, CDs, games and other smaller items including jewelry and so forth. Flipkart among all of these had the best service, too bad they have restricted their offerings now. I did not have any issues with flipkart, for me service was always prompt and if at all any issues came up, customer service did take care of it quickly. They kind of set the bench mark with respect to proper delivery and customer service. Landmarkonthenet is great for books and music CDs /DVD/Blu Rays also.
 
My biggest purchases online are
1. Nikon DSLR from Flipkart- almost 40K
2. Nikon DSLR from Snapdeal - 28K (CoD)
3. BB 9360 from Indiatimes 17K
4. Samy Tab2 from Flipkart- 16K
5. Sony BDP S-490 from ezoneonline- 9k
 
Well, one of the prominent issues I see from these guys is that they do not actually maintain stocks in house. They heavily rely on their vendors that they have tied up with and I am also sure they do not have an effective inventory management platform/system.
 
In US it is criminal offense to not to honor an order once it is accepted at a certain price. Therefore there have been instances, where things were posted up to 98% below actual price and retailers had to honor all the orders placed. There is no such law in India or I guess nobody is implementing them, which creates this issue.

I feel these guys try harming each other buy first keying a low price to get the customer in and then rejecting their orders.

Not to say that it didn't happen in some early days of the e-com business in USA, but honoring upto 98 percent of the actual value product looks false

If you read the terms and conditions of the selling websites, you would always find a way out for wrong price deals getting cancelation, in entire world

Please show me otherwise, when a deal is honoured @98 percent discount, with solid proof, because it's not possible, and i dont believe it (by court of law),
Means they may have honored that deal out of courtesy /reputation, even though they were not legally binding to honor the deal

There's always a case of human error, now human cannot even do an error in listing at all? Infact human beings do 98 percent things wrong in their entire life and only 2 percent right probably
 
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Even I have been scammed by Snapdeal. It is a scam. Won't last too long. Hopefully, snapdeal will soon be extinct as amazon gains momentum in India, will be for our best.
 
techboy.. frankly I don't want player like Snapdeal to close shop. rather I will be happy if they strive to service their customer better. In fact, more such sites will keep even the big booys to behave whether it is Amazon or someone else. If there's no competition then neither there will be great deals nor we will benefit in a large way. In US, there many others (like bestbuy, walmart etc) with whom Amazon has to fight and that's why they are trying to give some best deals we can see from here. Without those other players we will be seeing Amazon selling at a price close to MRP only. So as all say in real world only competition brings the best, both for consumer and for the seller.

But it is high time I would like the big 3 of current Indian e-tailer to pull up the sock and give a great service, for which people should feel confident of doing more and more business online through them. Else players like Amazon will finish them off in no time.
 
Because you have never had a bad experience with them.

90-95% of the time all is smooth.

But in the 5-10% when things don't go smoothly, they refuse to help you out. You can check any complaints about snapdeal or even flipkart online. I can understand a few dozen negative reviews, but 1000s of negative reviews makes no sense.

The same doesn't hold true for Amazon which only has a handful of negative reviews online.

I have myself been scammed by Snapdeal. Had you been in my shoes you would know why they deserve to close shop asap.

I don't want to share more details as I just coughed up the loss. But if somebody phones me up I will gladly tell them the whole tale in detail.
 
Not to say that it didn't happen in some early days of the e-com business in USA, but honoring upto 98 percent of the actual value product looks false

If you read the terms and conditions of the selling websites, you would always find a way out for wrong price deals getting cancelation, in entire world

Please show me otherwise, when a deal is honoured @98 percent discount, with solid proof, because it's not possible, and i dont believe it (by court of law),
Means they may have honored that deal out of courtesy /reputation, even though they were not legally binding to honor the deal

There's always a case of human error, now human cannot even do an error in listing at all? Infact human beings do 98 percent things wrong in their entire life and only 2 percent right probably
Well... that is exactly what happened once. United Airlines announced special fares on the SFO-BOM-SFO sector. Instead of printing the fare as $1299, the website listed it as $129. Within half an hour the news went viral. People from other parts of USA also started booking. By the end of one hour the server crashed. Some lucky ones got the fare booked. UA rectified the mistake by lunch time and the correct fare was back. But they did honour the fares. I know this for certain because one friend of mine got the fare and he did make his way to India and back at an incredible rate of $129 x 3. I missed it.

So, in USA, the BBB (Better Business Beaureau) monitors the business practices including e-Business. If a price is published and customer has purchased the merchandize at the stated price, it has to be honoured.
 
I too had a couple of items cancelled- from around 11 July when their "50%" sale was on. Irony was that today,(13/8) they have sent me an email asking me to comment if I would reccommend their services ( for an item which they did not deliver / cancelled ) to others.
I feel they are still growing and trying to improve - but like most Indian stores/ supermarkets or services - they just do not have sufficent qualified and culturally intelligent staff. I do not mean this negatively, as this just the way most of us Indians are, infact, this is one of the problems that even large BPO / Tech companies have with many highly qualified staff who go abroad for work -despite some amount of training being imparted- there are mis-understandings and Gaffes and also sheer crudity-including pushing ones way into Elevators /Que's / charging into trains/ buses or even just talking loudly.
Infact a very large corporation that I worked for abroad, had informed some of their staff who would have interactions with many such visiting software engineers etc etc(and not just from India) not to mis-understand certain lack of social graces or normally unaccaptable behaviour from colleagues.

Till such time as we have a large pool of employees who know the value of good service, and hopefully well paid enough for that- right now to try and deliver good service while paying minimum wages- we will have this type of attitude and problem. One company that tries hard to give us good service for e.g. Tatasky - still have a few call centre/ help desk employees- who just "do not get it" and will only parrot whatever the cue cards they have in front of them.....and not use common sense: and you have to insist on speaking to their superior.
 
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I must contribute to this thread as I recently had an unsavory experience. However the problem wasn't with SnapDeal per se, but with the courier service that they use to deliver all over India - Delhivery. Upon reporting this incident to SnapDeal (sorry I cannot go into more detail as this may turn out to be a police case) I got two impersonal and pre-written emails back, once saying it was an unusual case and apologizing and the second saying they cannot give me any feedback after speaking to the courier service. So basically I am completely clueless as to what SnapDeal have done about the incident. Because of this I will not be buying anything more from them. I have bought over Rs 60,000 from them in the past six months, but of course, this was not important to them at all.
 
Well... that is exactly what happened once. United Airlines announced special fares on the SFO-BOM-SFO sector. Instead of printing the fare as $1299, the website listed it as $129. Within half an hour the news went viral. People from other parts of USA also started booking. By the end of one hour the server crashed. Some lucky ones got the fare booked. UA rectified the mistake by lunch time and the correct fare was back. But they did honour the fares. I know this for certain because one friend of mine got the fare and he did make his way to India and back at an incredible rate of $129 x 3. I missed it.

So, in USA, the BBB (Better Business Beaureau) monitors the business practices including e-Business. If a price is published and customer has purchased the merchandize at the stated price, it has to be honoured.

I would still say, that they honored the deal because of courtesy and not because they had to, they could always could have said that sorry it was a mistake. Had they said sorry, no department, courts would have fined them

It's an open challenge

You did not read my post properly, i have said it clearly, company, or retailers can do honour the deal for their reputation too, though they are not legally binding
 
Once the seller makes an offer to sell a good or service for Rs.x and a buyer agrees to purchase that goods or service for Rs.x and for that purpose the buyer pays Rs.x to the seller and the seller accepts Rs.x as the price of his good or service, then contract is made between the buyer and seller. It cannot be terminated on the ground that there was a typo graphical mistake.
 
I would still say, that they honored the deal because of courtesy and not because they had to, they could always could have said that sorry it was a mistake. Had they said sorry, no department, courts would have fined them

It's an open challenge

You did not read my post properly, i have said it clearly, company, or retailers can do honour the deal for their reputation too, though they are not legally binding
Indeed, no. You are mistaken. There is no courtsey or indulgence here. Published prices must be honoured. That is the law in USA, Europe and most other places. Prices can be changed anytime but whatever deal happens at a published price at a moment cannot be broken unless the buyer agrees.

Snapdeal seems to be happily publishing "wrong" prices and then cancelling orders stating that stock is unavailable. If stock is not available, order cannot be unilaterally cancelled by the selling party. In such a case, items are placed on backorder or customer is given a chance to cancel the order. I have never ever observed the practice of seller cancelling the order (from a reputed company - be it brick & mortor or e-business). Funnily enough, at Snapdeal, the same item appears to be "in stock" at new prices.

I can accept human error (in pricing) once. But this seems to be happening too often at Snapdeal which tells me that this is not a sound business house. Personally I have no experience as I have never dealt with Snapdeal but I am basing my statements on various collaborations/posts herein.

For further reading:

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus35-advertising-faqs-guide-small-business
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/decptprc.htm
 
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