My experience with fashionara uptd. 31st July, 13. Review on Fashionara

Fashionara for me has been a huge surprise. From an apprehensive 3 star rating after my first purchase, I have now come back to re-review the site with a well earned 5 star ratings. I've been a shopper at several topshot online shopping portals but finally decided to settle down with fashionara. This site has everything I needed as a shopper. In less than a month's time, I've placed more than 5 big orders on the site and that's first time for me, I'm always restricted when it comes to online shopping.

Site experience:

From its one of a kind loyalty program which not only helps you earn points and redeem store credits for shopping but also for certain site activities like shortlisting clothes you love; to the highly customized personal wardrobe that gives you clothing suggestion based on your past purchases and items you've shortlisted/wishlisted to several other awesome features like tracking discounts, returns etc; fashionara has added a lot of tidbits here and there to keep shopper occupied and to make their shopping experience really fun. The filters are a bit painful to get through, but other than that it's pretty much a smooth sail. You can create a wishlist of your favorite items, add personalized comments about it and share it with your friends. I also love the shortlist+ compare all option. Just like yebhi, fashionara too has started adding videos with live models and much, much better coding that doesn't take millennia to load or give your browser a heart attack.

Discounts and site USP: Deal of the day

Fashionara has a bulk load of various discounts always going on which you can also track through your user control panel. But their USP is definitely "Deal of the day" feature; where in they provide a new discount scheme EVERYDAY! And really good deals at that, from 50% off on all tops to 31% off on all Indianwear etc. No minimum purchase, no pesky terms and conditions. You have to try it yourself to see how nice it is. In fact I've placed all my orders so far using some kind of discounts or DOD only and all purchases have to been total value for money.

The collections

When looking at most online women clothing section, I'm usually disappointed and wonder is this what people like wearing these days? Most of them are so.bland. It doesn't matter if they are big brands or whatever, I want to at least buy something that looks fashionable on someone other than a size zero model. Fashionara not only has a very wide and wearable variety, their collections sell out often making way for fresh products. What I like about their clothing store is that they focus more on bringing products that a woman is comfortable wearing in daily life while still being stylish instead of adding hundreds and hundreds of products that only look good in pictures.

Shipping and Delivery

From minimum 24 hours to maximum a little over 2 days for all my orders so far. I'd say it's quite timely.

Customer Care

The customer care number for fashionara is toll free and quick to connect. My experience with customer care CCs is usually on the negative side(if I contact them at all, I usually prefer written correspondence). The moment one of the CC picks a phone you can tell the difference that fashionara CC is on different level. All the agents are very cordial, well spoken and quick to resolve your queries. You can feel their friendliness in the tone they use. I'd go as far as to say out of all customer cares I've dealt with up to this point, fashionara is my most favorite.

Packaging and shipment quality

Most online shopping portals have to regularly deal with a lot of folding/unfolding, packing unpacking, trials and returns etc on regular basis as far as clothing is concerned. In such a case I do not consider it to be a big issue when a site delivers me a product whose tags doesn't look "factory new" as long as I can make sure the garment itself is unworn/unused. Not with fashionara, no. I don't know about others but everything they delivered to me looked absolutely factory brand new and would have made no difference if I bought them directly from a store. Everything comes very nicely packaged and gift wrapped in beautiful papers which is a very nice gesture by fashionara to make their shoppers feel special.

Trials, returns and refunds

Fashionara has a hassle free returns/refund policy. Unlike a lot of other sites I tried which tend to cancel discounts on an order if an exchange is done; fashionara is pretty flexible. The first time I ordered using inaugural 20% discount I purchased 3 clothing out of which I asked for size change of one, and exchanged another for something else from different brand(100 Rs higher in price). I didn't have to provide any lengthy explanations, the CC just checked for stock of what I wanted and arranged for a reverse pick up. The discount was recalculated on my bill and I only had to pay 50/- difference discounted amount instead of the original 100/-. Granted the whole process was a bit slow because the items were first picked from my home then sent to Bangalore for QA and then new items re-shipped so the whole thing took about 7-10 days but I'm willing to overlook that given that they are at least reliable. Fashionara also has on the spot trial offers for some metro cities where they have their own courier delivery services, luckily this is available for my location too but frankly their returns processing is so flawless I never really had to rely on trial on the spot. I haven't got anything refunded yet, but looking at their response in other areas I'm fairly confident that they process refunds in timely fashion too but don't take my word for this.

Payments

Fashionara is the first site where I've always felt comfortable enough to make payments using credit card. Otherwise I always opt for COD to counter any last minute muddle ups by the company if there is late delivery or no show etc. Using store credits is also very easy, you just need to tick the box during checkout to use your current credit and it acts as prepaid cash so it's deducted from billing amount right away.

Customer Satisfaction and support

Granted fashionara hasn't collaborated with mouthshut, but they are quite focused on customer satisfaction all on their own. The only one time I left them a negative feedback on their site(they've a feedback box in bottom of site), I got a call back within half an hour and the agent on phone promptly resolved the issue I was facing. I was astonished by their speedy response.Written emails are also usually always responded to within 24hrs.  There is also a live chat option if you need any assistance on site. They are also customer centric in ways that they are always willing to go an extra mile based on customer to customer which shows that they do not have "one size fits all" mentality.

Fashionara has effectively replaced market/mall shopping for me. Gone are those days where I've to pay hefty bills for taxi or stand all the way through till home in metro and deal with all the summer heat, sweat and filth on roads in local markets to scout for a worthy deal. Even my mother likes this site, she always used to shop at central market Lajpat Nagar before. I can certainly recommend fashionara to others for their shopping needs and plan to visit them regularly in future.