Flipkart & the Pointy Haired Ones

Update: Flipkart customer service called to 'assure' me that an ETA of 'within 2-3 business days of placing oprder' is a better ETA than 'May 2'.

I said they are morons and stand by it!

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I have been a fairly regular customer of Flipkart, having ordered ~ 50 books / CD's in the course of my online shopping with them.

If memory serves me right, when I first ordered a book, I was pleasantly surprised to find a book ordered late on a Saturday night delivered the following Monday.

Of course, there have been ups and downs with Flipkart making (and then rectifying) pricing "errors", suffering from poor website response times and throwing 500/502 Bad Gateway errors every now and then. However, I'd been going back to Flipkart because it seemed reliable for timely delivery.

Not any more.

On a a recently placed order (this weekend), the ETA changed without warning from 'May 2nd' to '3 business days from order date'. Now, a glance of the My Orders page gives me *no* useful information. In order to (try and) calculate when my order will arrive, I have to click the order, look up the order date, and then try and figure out Flipkart's holiday list in order to determine when the '3 business days' will be up.

In today's day and age of *intense* online competition, what kind of organization goes from being user-friendly to user-unfriendly? Does Flipkart actually think that reducing functionality is the way to keep customers coming back for more?

Certainly seems like Flipkart is being taken over by the Pointy Haired Community.

Eagerly waiting to take my business  to www.amazon.in!

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Update: Looks like I'm not the only one having issues with Flipkart. Lots of disgruntled customers vent here.

Flipkart, Too, is a Cheat?

Update (11/11/2011): Flipkart customer service called saying it was an error and the book is now listed at Rs 295, with a discounted price of Rs 221. I was offered either store credit or a refund. I opted for the former and have received it. 

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I am extremely disappointed to be writing this blogpost.

I ordered the book "I Too Had a Dream" from flipkart.com. It was advertised at Rs 395, and marked down to Rs 296. I dutifully paid Rs 296, and waited for the book to arrive.

The MRP printed on the book delivered by flipkart was Rs 295.I feel terribly cheated by this underhand way of marking up and then marking down a book. It is a book I wanted to read; I would I have bought it *anyway*. Why this charade of offering a discount?

Also, isn't it downright illegal to sell it for MORE than it costs (even by a rupee)?

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More Flipkart horror here.