Finally, it's time to let you know what all can happen to you (already happened to me) if you go for online shopping in India. Yes, there are the GOOD the BAD and ofcourse, the UGLY.
So better to start with the BAD (and ugly) ones.
Indiatimes Online Shopping is the definition of WORST online shopping experience ever. moreover you will see down these lines the fraud they do with your credit card numbers.
All names in this report are as true as possible and we openly invite the parties to come forward if they think their names have been mis-utilized.
August 2006, and we had to buy two internet domain names. So we thought it should be a better idea to buy from Indian dealers as we can contact them easily(!). Still we searched for articles by previous buyers to get some insight into the Indian players e.g. Rediff and Indiatimes. Alas, there was nothing to help us.(may be we were the first to buy something on Indiatimes online shopping ;()
So we went ahead and tried to book two domain names via my CitiBank Credit Card.
Shtt..now they say that someone(next week perhaps) will check my details and do the needful. One day gone... Two days... Three... and I got a reply that my order could not be processed due to insufficient address.(BTM, Bangalore) On the other hand, my friend's order got processed even though his address was Ooty, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, 560029.(You know where OOTY is and where Bhubaneswar, and the pincode was of BTM Bangalore)
My friend said, 'Don'd worry, Indiatimes seems to be reliable name. They will refund the money if not booked..."
So again we tried to book the domains via UTI Bank net-banking and it woked! (because Indiatimes wont dare to do fraud while dealing directly with bank websites)
So the domains were booked finally.
One month passed!
The next credit card bill triggerred the alarm. FOUR transactions at Indiatimes.(see the portion of my bill in the picture)
Immediately I called them. None of the three phone numbers listed on their shopping-customer-care reached any human. They let me listen to quite melodious "Om...Om.... "chanting. (It was not caller-tune or something..I was getting billed by Hutch for that Om...Om...)
Then the male-voice (again machine) said, "namaskar, Welcome to India times..." and it continues with all options to reach different departments. But believe me, (better you try calling them now!) all these extensions must be fake and connecting to a single phone-line. Because any extension you press, you will hear the phone ringing and finally it would say,"sorry there is no voicemail configured at this number". A closed statement. Never request you to call later or reach any alternative.
The above continued for months, and we were helpless. The amount of money doesnot matter as much. But the feeling of having been cheated and fear of the same in future (fraudsters have my credit card number) does.
Called Citibank and a sweet voice said they can not entertain my request as the transaction is more than 90 days old!
So back to Indiatimes phone number. Many more tries resulted in the same "Om..." chantings. Just a minute, the machine male-voice saying "Namaskar..." was resembling similar voice in some Ramanand Sagar serials. Or most appropriately, it matched the Mahabharat intro..."Mein Samay..."(I am Time...).
Getting all this, we decided to contact their local office in Bangalore. They gave a mail id to mail to. And it bouced. bounced and bounced. Three times we called Bangalore office, got three different mail IDs and all bouced.
Quite unexpected, infact a shock, that our call was picked by a lady one day. (not sure if it was house-keeping staff). She told her name (see further in this article) and asked how she could help me. I told the story. She asked me to send her a mail regarding all this. (now I was thinking I hit some very senior powerful official and problem would be gone!)
probably i need to put some more screenshots/proofs before proceeding further. Give me few minutes. It is not good to blame ppl when you are not showing sufficient proofs.
to.be.continued
