E-Commerce in India - Players review based on my Personal Experiences

E-Commerce has come a long way in last few years in India. From the days, few years ago when Flipkart and eBay were the prime players, entry of Amazon around a year back and a large number of small to medium size players have also been helping shape the industry and customer experiences.

I had shared my earlier E-Commerce Website Experiences since 2012 through various posts including the summary post.  I have continued to shop online for my home shopping needs from clothes to electronics, also I am an active user of bill payment services and now thought of sharing my recent experiences and my feedback.

Amazon has been giving a tough competition to both Flipkart and eBay. Snapdeal, HomeShop18 have also been growing. Specialty Fashion portals like Jabong and Myntra (acquired by Flipkart earlier in year 2014), grocery sites like BigBasket.com also have been doing brisk business by offering convenience of delivery of products at doorstep.

There is also online presence by Brick and Mortar stores like ezone and Croma which some times offer good deals on products.

Overall experience have been reasonably positive dealing with most of these sites and I did not have any horrifying experience like I had earlier with  Letsbuy.com when they delivered my a used LED TV.

Primarily I shop on Amazon, Flipkart and eBay. All three are currently a platform for thousands of sellers to sell their products. Flipkart sells and promotes products listed by their subsidiary WS Retail, which they list as one of the sellers.

Experience incident from Flipkart

Experience with Flipkart has been good with products purchased from their own selling subsidiary WS Retail. They also have one or two days guaranteed delivery option with certain products in large cities. In February 2014 I had ordered Moto G phone with a guaranteed delivery option and when it got delayed by a day they refunded me double the amount of Rs99 they had charged for expedited delivery (total of Rs99x3 refunded including amount I had paid). To my surprise after few days they also sent a sorry card along with a free Bluetooth headset as a goodwill gesture. I had not experienced such customer service in India at least. That is what is called causing delight to customer even when one of the commitments was not met.

Experience incident from Amazon

Experience with Amazon India has been good and they over last one year have given touch competition to Flipkart and other retailers. Items I purchased from Amazon include books, clothes, sporting goods, electronics and electrical items. Although they all have been sold by different sellers but "fullfilled by Amazon" and they have done well in terms of delivery in good condition within committed timelines. 

E-Commerce - Indian Online Shopping Websites - Review and Experiences

Avoiding visiting crouded malls and shops and envouraged by good deals available online I have continued shopping online for technology and other items. I have already shared my experience with Letsbuy.com and now I thought of sharing my personal experiences with some of the other websites also.

Good experiences so far which I had based on my on shopping -
www.Ebay.in - for various items from different sellers. Ebay guarantee on delivery of product and resolution mechanism if sellers do not keep up their promise is quite good. Ofcourse you need to check reputation and earlier feedback of seller and check description of product carefully.

www.Flipkart.com - Placed 4-5 orders and all deliverd in time specially books ordering experience is very good. Also placed orders for memory devices. Prices are not best for memories but if some thing is needed urgently specially in Bangalore, I prefer to order from Flipkart. They delivered me a 16GB Sandisk card next day morning when an order was placed late in afternoon.

www.Myntra.com - Placed a shoes order and was delivered very fast in good condition with in 2 days.

www.zoomin.com/Cameras - Placed one Sony Camera order and delivered well packed in good factory sealed condition.

www.Homeshop18.com - Placed few orders including electronics items like hard disks, memories and other house hold items all received in good condition. Once there was a need to return item and return pickup was also quite efficient. They take orders and vendors fullfil for them. Returns also need to go to respective sellers but HS18 provides good service and assurance of delivery.

www.Futurebazaar.com - All most all of 5-6 orders were delivered well. Phone and email support is quite efficient. Some times they sell old stock of tools etc at very low price to clear inventories. Their I had noted few items with some rust but price I paid was farely low.

www.Koovs.com - Have placed 4-5 orders. All delivered. Their standard delivery time is 7 days. They have delivered all orders. Shipping can be faster.

Sulekha deals
deals.sulekha.com/- One order. Good experience. They take orders and vendors fullfil for them.

www.Greendust.com - Couple of memory orders. Slow in delivery but all items delivered.

www.Letsbuy.com. Bad experiences - You can see my detailed review of my TV order. You have to remind them to ship order or have to make noise on mouthshut.com to make them hear. Very difficult to get them on phone on their help line. Many false promises and delayed shipments.

www.Snapdeal.com Bad experience (March 2012) - Ordered a Samsung 16GB Micro SD Card (Class 10) and invoice, packing all communication was correctly showing the product but they delivered a lower speed grade card, a Class 6 instead of Class 10. Many other users also who had ordered the product received the same wrong product. Customer service responsiveness is also not so good. Haven't heard back to email I sent on this issue. Now either have to accept the product they have sent or get into hastle of sending product back and wait for another one or refund.

Clifton 
www.clifton.in - Overall negative experience. Two orders placed. Both were shipped and delivered after followup with the company later that commited time of delivery. They took 7+ days in both cases for a local Bangalore delivery. Second order product was a different color product
than what was ordered. Non standard deIt appears that E-commerce venture for them is an experimental one.

Difference between various online shopping site companies is primarily due to their attitude towards customer service and also to a large extend on how efficiently and accurately they can process order and have it efficiently shipped (IT and logistics part of business). Some sites have accurate inventory information and order status information available to customers and support staff e.g. Future Bazaar, Flipkart and Myntra appear to have things like this worked out and implemented well. Letsbuy appears to be doing a lot of things manually and most of their staff appears to be not so well trained or may be only trained on how to keep customer confused and occupied with false promises till their system some how takes care of the order processing if at all.

 Others and Many times problems are with the shipment/courier companies. So it is good to check which services these online shopping sites use. Best service - Bluedart, Fedex. Even professional courier is good. Worst experiences - Aramex.

In Feb 2012 - There are press reports that Flipkart is acquiring Letsbuy and Myntra. Such consolidation and acquisition by better performing companies will help overall e-commerce industry. Hope is that customer service and reach of these companies will improve.

Later it came out that Flipkart just acquired Letsbuy and Myntra continues to be an independent company.