Flipkart - mixed emotions from a user prespective. Review on Flipkart

Flipkart is now by far the largest player on the online shopping destination for all electronic and household items in India, so here is whats bad and good on the site.

What we like:

• By far, the best I like is the service and quick to deliver at home, of-course I live at Bangalore and their branch is at Bangalore, so the goods do arrive on time 90% of the time, but there are times when the stocks run out low you get a delayed shipment, happened to me once(but you cant blame them).

  
  




• The customer care is friendly, they do listen and talk nice, no issue with them so far, but like all customer care they give diplomatic answers(we will take this on priority and get back to you:)).

  
  




• The product range is good and shows up all the latest products as soon as its on the market.

  
  




• The webpage is easy to navigate and easy to use and have no issue in finding the product quick and easily.

  
  




• Flipkart at early stages brought in books as their main list, and its still keeps in a great collection on the website and some decent price.

  
  




• Flipkart do have a Facebook page and they do take and provide feedback to most of the valid comments, which is nice thing to see.

  
  




• They do provide EMI feature, which is a good thing to have if you want the product badly.

  
  




• They have return policy too for many products, but I haven't used on yet so cant comment if they actually take the policy seriously or its a gimmick, since I haven't used it, I put in the pros section, since at least its there.

  
  

What we dont like:

So now lets comes to interesting part .

• The biggest disappointment with Flipkart was they brought down the site LetsBuy.com( a another online site), letsbuy was my favorite online website because of the range of products you can get from cheap Chinese brand to branded stuff, it had stuff of all the price range. After Flipkart brought the site, it complete brought the website down. I thought that they would merge the product and site but in fact they didn't have any such plans.

  
  




• Flipkart doesn't give you alternative, it always give you only branded stuff when we in India look also on the budget side of thing which looks good as well, for eg. If I had to buy clock Letsbuy would have shown me all funky design Chinese clock which was the design I was looking for, Flipkart gives you branded clock with boring round design, it lacks the product displayed.

  
  




• Flipkart products comment is always stereotyped, they never accept comments which talks bad about their service, the company and price shown on the website, they would reply you stating that you have violated their term of service and will not publish the comment . so buyers never believe most of the comments on the site.

  
  




• I remember I was shopping for a Tikona Lens and the picture displayed was of Sony lens, I replied in their comment and they took my comment down, when I took the same concern on their Facebook, thats when they looked at it.

  
  




• The Flipkart doesn't give you any competitive price for their product, it used to be really competitive when Letsbuy was around and I had got some good deals, but now I find it on the expensive side. I would suggest online shoppers check the price of the product you are buying on Ebay, Tradus and local store / online before you finally making your decision.

  
  




• Once I was shopping for Sigma f2.8 lens, on Flipkart it was 48k and one seller on Ebay was selling for 39k, a huge price difference, Nokia  was 15k on the website, but on the main Nokia website it was 13k

  
  




• Flipkart doesn't give you any " Deal of the day " or " Promo code " feature like Tradus or Indiatimes shopping does, which is really sad .

  
  




• Off late I have seen Flipkart shipping product where the seal is broken, like I brought a case for my Nexus 4, the product came in was not in the packaging, and my friend  complained that he got a phone from Flipkart and his box seal was broken, seems like they are selling returned products or second handed product, no idea, but its unfair practice from the company.

  
  




• The combo feature is a gimmick, they charge extra on any product you are buying and say its a combo .

  
  




• The product shown as available but when brought they might cancel it without prior notice and say it no more available, happened to my colleague once

  
  




• When they see there is a demand of the product, they tend to increase the price by 100 or 200 rupees, this happened to me once .

  
  

Verdict:

No doubt Flipkart needs to given hats off in taking up the space they are in now in a short time, but like all other company after they moved into a organization they are now in eating money and give less to the consumers.

Since I have seen Flipkart to be charging more than other competitors. Nowadays before buying from Flipkart I see the same product price on Ebay, Tradus, Indiatimesshopping, Rediff, Amazon India and some local dealers before making my final call.

It once used to have my respect for being a reliable website, but now slowly I'm losing the interest in the site, but yes I do visit the site first to know the price and then keep that has a benchmark before checking other sites.:)

So to wrap it all, good site, got all the stuffs you need, but before spending the hard earned cash make sure you check the other competitors before giving your money.

Thanks.