Ebay India phone buying experience / review - ebay.in Seller sankyoelectronics

Being adventurous in online shopping does not go well always!

I placed an order for a cell phone from ebay India seller sankyoelectronics who is from Chennai.

http://cgi.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150835286131

As per seller listing it is
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro SK17i Mobile + Warranty
Condition "New: A brand-new, unused and undamaged item."
http://myworld.ebay.in/sankyoelectronics


Shipper/Seller Address -
Gopalakrishnan M
Sankyo Electronics
14 Periyar Street , Kulasekarapuram
Virugambakkam Chennai - 600092 
Seller phone number 044-43518526

On packing there was also a from Sticker
K J Enterprises
#27 Kasim Street Royapettah
Chennai - 600014

Surprisingly as against claimed by seller that it is a brand new unused item it was a used one without proper packing.

The product received was not in new condition. See pictures

1. Box was not sealed.
2. Company packing was missing in the box
3. All items were packed in old plastic covers with cello tape attached.
4. Phone had a lot of finger prints and marks on the body. I cleaned there was no screen damage.
5. Charger also has marks and repacked. definitely old used charger.
6. The ear phone was also old piece not the one company gives with this model.
7. Clock was already set on the phone. some one had used it earlier.

Shipment

Seal on top only

No seal on bottom. clearly opened and closed from bottom of the box

Repackaged in old cover. not fresh piece

Lots of fingerprints and marks on screen

These were the contents packed in individual old plastic covers.
No other internal packing or documentation etc. One paper only

Charger is also used  with marks on it

This is an older model Sony Ericsson HPM-60/J  not the latest  earphone that comes with this model.

Clock was already set when turned on. Cleaned the screen, there was no damage to the screen.

Product was not in brand new condition as described by seller. It is otherwise working.

I have raised an ebay case for resolution with the seller.

Original Seller Listing

Although seller has 98% positive feedback, recently few people have complained against old / missing items. I went by the positive feedback and took a chance of ordering. It ended up a bad experience. Please be careful dealing with this and similar sellers on ebay.

Seller cheated - despite his promise that he will ship new accessories like charger and earphone he did not ship. He requested that he has a review with Ebay and his business gets hurt by negative feedback and so his feedback should be changed from negative to positive. I trusted him and changed feedback. After that he stopped responding to my emails and phone calls. Never trust such seller and give them any business.

Don't trust sellers and change feedback until they fix your problem.  After you change feedback like I did for Sankyo Electronics, even Ebay does not care.

Update Nov 2012- Based on comments to my post I see that many buyers faced issues with products and quality of service from this seller. Now while browing ebay I just noted that this seller SankyoElectronics is no longer registered on ebay and his ID is deactivated.

Ebay page showing that seller is no longer registered. 

Blackberry Curve Series Phone - BB Curve 8520 after a year plus of ownership. Poor Product and Service from Blackberry India.

My first mobile phone was a Philips phone in 1998 which were followed through the years by many phones from Nokia, Sony Ericson, LG, Samsung and then around 1.5 year back a Blackberry. Blackberry usage experience has been good but the handset itself is a bad experience in terms of reliability and usable life. Never seen a phone or its parts falling apart the way this Blackberry handset did.

Blackberry was out of compulsion to access corporate emails and I settled for the modest BB Curve 8520 which was purchased through the service provider Airtel. The phone felt robust in hand had a good keyboard, dedicated music buttons, rubberized grip around the phone, couple of buttons which can be customized and had decent features and easy to use.

After around 8 months of use the rubber parts on the body started feeling rough and grainy and I thought this is regular wear and tear. After few months I started seeing few cracks on it and eventually over next few months there were more of these. After a year or so the rubber material buttons started cracking and one fine day when I tried to press a button on side to turn on the data connection there was no button. The button (which is actually just part of the molded rubber part of the body) had just cracked and fallen some where. Over next week one by one all the buttons even the ones rarely used and rubber around the buttons had just vanished.

To my surprise in my office when I looked at BB curve phones used by others many of them had faced same problem and any one having a phone for more than a year typically had buttons on their phone missing. Many even had the buttons on top (three music/mute buttons) missing. Problem with missing button, you can not control volume and many other features of the phone and also water and dust can easily go inside and phone looks ugly.

See 2 buttons of right side gone and upper volume button in process of cracking and next one shows button gone.Left side one button also gone missing.

And now the Blackberry Service in India. 

When I called service center in Bangalore I was told body etc are not covered specially when it is one year old and out of warranty. I posted a message to BB India through twitter and then said they can look into it. I also posted few pictures for them to look at and informed the fact that it is not only me and many other users who have problem and it is a design issue with the kind of material and button design being used in the Curve series of phones. BB India informed that their service partner Redington will get in touch and fix problem for me.

Redington after few followups informed me they will cosmetic upgrade (change the body) on my phone in coming days but after few days informed that phone is not sold through their channel and they can not do any thing about it and will tell BB India the same. On reminding BB again they mentioned contact the service provider. They communicate through Twitter direct message and never have really looked into the issue seriously. Curve has been one of the best sellers for Blackberry but so many users have this problem due to bad design and poor choice of material. They continue to sell Curve series of phones with this design and even the newly launched model Curve 9220 uses similar rubberized button design.

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.

Letsbuy.com Review - Delivered an old Samsung LED TV - New unit delivered now.

After being in touch with Letsbuy.com team, they have helped resolve my issue of old TV delivery. They have promised that Letsbuy.com is strengthening their processes to ensure such incidents don't repeat. Today morning (1st Nov 2011) a  fresh new TV with manufacturing date of Oct 2011 with 0 hours of usage history was delivered. Will update my original post on delivery of old used Samsung LED UA32D5900 TV with new pictures. My other item in order Samsung BlueRay player BD-D5100 was also delivered but has a problem right out of the box. Its drive is making loud sounds when turned on. This is a new piece with Samsung's manufacturing defect but I have reported it to Letsbuy for a replacement.

I am hoping for many other customers who continue to report issues with Letsbuy (Mouthshut letsbuy review page), their issues also get resolved. 

----------------

Update 8 Nov. 2011.

I noted another customer of Letsbuy.com, Vikas complaining about they sending a used Plasma TV. You can see his review on Mouthshut.

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Letsbuy-com-review-rpopplotnn

- Neeraj

Review of Letsbuy.com - Delivered an old used Samsung LED TV

My new blog is at 
-----https://technology-know-how.blogspot.com/
----  For my amazon reviewer profile - click here.

My experience with letsbuy.com for a TV purchase has been very bad.
(Later edited - 1 Nov 2011 - Issue resolved after raising issue with Letsbuy - Below are details of overall experience)

Placed order of Samsung Series 5 LED TV UA32D5900EA (UA32D5900VR) from letsbuy.com on 24th Oct 2011 with Samsung Company offer of a Blueray player free plus a surprise Diwali gift on offer by Letsbuy.com. On each followup I was told that both items are in stock and will be shipped soon. They shipped TV on 28th shipped only TV and said I have to wait for Blueray player. I was fine with the wait as atleast TV was getting shipped.

Surprise and frustration – once the TV was delivered on 29th Oct. It was an old used TV most likely a dealer demo / display unit with old manufacturing date – all user manuals, cards, remote accessories were used and open from original covers and packed again with tape. Even TV cover and internal packing material, box shows that box was stored for many months and TV used. On screen one can see that some one has cleaned the screen and packed it again with a number of old used tapes inside the box. In service menu it shows TV used for around 600 hours.  This is totally different from Letsbuy.com's promise they have on website "Letsbuy only sells 100% genuine and brand new products". This delivery was definitely was not the case that supports this claim.

Panel Display Time (time for which TV has been used is ~600 hours). Considering July manufacturing and assuming usage started in August till 27th Oct, some one has used this set for an average of 7 hours every day. Most likely a dealer/distributor showroom display piece.

See images below which I have also shared with letsbuy - their customer service and their CEO Mr. Hitesh Dhingra. As per my call with him looks like Samsung dealer or distributor has cheated them and so caused this. They have promised a replacement in 1-2 days. I will update on final outcome.

I will write separately on their customer service aspects.

Intent of Mr. Hitesh Dhingra, co-founder and CEO and Amanpreet Bajaj, co-founder and COO of Letsbuy.com and others in Letsbuy Management may be good and I hope they are successful but they need to work on customer service, supply chain and their infrastructure if they really want letsbuy to be a relevant player in ecommerce in India.

- Neeraj

Following are snapshots of product delivered by Letsbuy.com

Update 1st Nov 2011 - New UA32D5900 TV Delivered 

Volkswagen India - No Delivery of Vehicle - Poor Responsiveness and Quality of Service - Worst Dealerships

We made a booking for VW Polo from Volkswagen Jalandhar - Lally Motors India (P) Ltd. In Punjab.

Booking was made with above dealer on 19th Dec 2010 and was informed 3-4 months wait time. Total booking amount given to Dealer in December 2010 was Rs49000. At time of booking dealer had promised that vehicle will be delivered in March 2011 but the vehicle has not yet been delivered as on 23rd May 2011. One day we were informed on phone that vehicle is available in April 15th, when we went to get delivery at dealership we were informed that same vehicle has been given to some other customer and we need to wait for couple of more days. After waiting for more, week after week there is no update on the vehicle. We also have given full remaining payment through Bank draft of Rs 503552 on 3rd May based on more promises made by dealer that vehicle will be there in couple of days.

Till date there is no vehicle and dealer has taken full payment. Now they are saying to wait till month end. The dealership has acted in highly unprofessional way and it is our worst experience in dealing with any of the car dealers. We have dealt with many other auto companies and dealers but Volkswagen experience has surely not started on a positive note. I personally wrote to Volkswagen through their website on 18th May and I got an automated reply that dealer will contact us. Dealer did not care to contact. When we visited the dealer he was again non-commited on any dates.

Dealer keeps blaiming the company that they do not make enough cars and take orders. At end of the day, they have taken full payment, we are loosing on interest that we are pying to the bank and there is no vehicle. What an attitude this company is having towards customers. They are a world wide brand and possibly also made a mistake in choosing a dealer.

When I called the toll free number they informed that they are just a call center and will forward complaint to the VW department. Please beware when you deal with Volkswagen India and specially their dealership in Punjab/Jalandhar (Volkswagen Jalandhar - Lally Motors India (P) Ltd). Also do not make any advance payments on their commitment that vehicle will be available very soon.

Following is text of email that came from VW support (actually from their call center people as they said same case number they have forwarded to VW department)


From: customer.care@volkswagen.co.in [mailto:customer.care@volkswagen.co.in]
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 10:19 AM
To: Neeraj Sharma
Subject: System generated Acknowledgement email

Date: 05/19/2011

Concern No: VWGxxxx

Vehicle: Polo

Name of Customer: Mr. Vijay Kumar Sharma

Dealer Name: Lally Motors India Pvt. Ltd. Dealer Location: Jalandhar

Dear Mr. Vijay Kumar Sharma


Greetings from Volkswagen Passenger Cars India!


We acknowledge the receipt of your concern to us and have noted the contents of the same.


We wish to inform you that we have forwarded your concerns to our dealer M/s Lally Motors India Pvt. Ltd. at Jalandhar. We assure you that your concerns will be attended on a priority basis and as per Volkswagen standards.



If you need any further assistance, kindly feel free to call Lally Motors India Pvt. Ltd. or Volkswagen India Assistance 24x7, Anytime. Anywhere. Call toll free 1800 102 0909 / 1800 209 0909. You can also write to us at customercaresales@volkswagen.co.in .

We thank you for choosing Volkswagen and assure you our best services always.

With best regards,



Customer Care

Sales

Volkswagen Passenger Cars India

--------

Eventually after followups and reminders vehicle was delivered later than promised. Dealers as usual don't like being complained about them to parent companies. Companies and dealerships have to be sensitive about overall customer experience and up their service levels. typically every one is sweet and nice till a sale order is closed. After that many companies, dealers and customer service cells of these entities have a don't care attitude.

- Neeraj

Tata Nano owner seeks compensation

Tata Nano owner is seeking Rs 15lacs (1.5million) from Tata Motors as compensation for his new Tata Nano that caught fire on the day of purchase.
Details at DNA link
http://www.dnaindia.com/mobile/report.php?n=1370119
Response from Tata has not been very supportive or encouraging to their customers. We do not have a strong regulator like transport safety administrators in USA or Europe and Auto companies take quality and safety very lightly. Instead of just focusing on emission norms of vehicles it is high time that an empowered regulatory agency is formed which provides guidance on and monitors road and vehicle safety issues.

- Neeraj

Europa Locks Bangalore Bad After Sale/Installation Quality of Service

In my apartment after using cupboard locks from Europa Locks ( I decided to also go for a second main door lock from the same company. So around 10 daya back I got Europa main door lock from a Timber Store on Sarjapur Road Bangalore ( 3 dead bolt dimple keys model MRP Rs. 1135) and I was informed that company person will come and install the same which is a free service for main door locks. The shop keeper booked an installation request with company representative and (some request number was also assigned) I was updated that someone will come in 2 days. After more than a week of follow up almost every day and hearing that someone will come today/tomorrow afternoon/evening finally today I went to the shop where I got the lock and gave them the box telling that I will rather go for Godrej lock who were more responsive in terms of service in past. Finally shop keeper sent his own carpenter to get the lock installed instead of waiting for the company person any more. The same is now installed but quality/installation is not to my satisfaction as the keys feel too hard to turn both open and lock. I was told that they will get this fixed now from the company person again and I should wait.

Overall a very bad experience. Overall products quality feels good (atleast in packaging) and all the good things the company writes about the company and products on Europa Locks website and product packaging but in field and operations, quality of service this company has a long way to go to meet customer satisfaction. I would suggest stay with better known companies like Godrej or even Link Locks.

- Neeraj 25 March 2010

Update - After communicating with the company - the problem is now resolved and lock is now functioning to my satisfaction as updated in the comment.

- Neeraj 29 March 2010

Bangalore Europa Locks Service Numbers as provided by one of the blog viewers - 9448385429, 9342574721. These numbers are specifically for Bangalore. 

Bad product quality of a laptop and worst customer service by HCL Infosystems

My relative in Punjab bought (or rather made a mistake of buying) an HCL laptop from authorized dealer in Kapurthala in Punjab for around Rs30000. (~ $650)

* Machine Serial No : 8084AX056382
* Product Code : AX0P2825
* Warranty Card No. : 10485949
* Date of Installation: 18/11/2008

After some time of purchase the machine started giving problems with the display which was reported to HCL and given to service center for warranty repair.. Even after keeping machine for weeks for repair a permanent fix was not done by HCL service and the same problem reoccurred 3rd time in October/November and machine was again given to HCL as it was still in warranty.

Calls to HCL's Support desk were essentially of no use and waste of time and effort. Machine was last given to HCL service center on 9th November 2009 and have not been returned by the company till date (today 7th January 2010). What kind of service is this? Essentially during last 12 months machine has been with HCL service for close to 4 months. So HCL has taken money for the laptop and in a way still owns the machine, Isn't that cheating?

Emails and calls to HCL helpline have not resulted in any thing. This example shows how some of these Indian companies treat customers.

I have suggested to file a consumer and civil court case against HCL Infosystems for compensation. I would suggest buying a laptop or a computer from Dell, Acer, HP, Compaq or Toshiba and avoid local brands specially HCL.

- Neeraj