It began with the idea of gifting my wife the latest harry potter book. Indiaplaza
position’s itself as a ’gifting’ site / ecommerce platform and despite the
local ’touch-n-feel’ / economical options like ’Strand Book Store’ in bombay, I
still chose to give the site a shot given the apparent ’convenience’ of getting
a ’gift’ shipped directly to my wife at her office address and as a surprise
with a personalized name and message. None of that happened. They got my name
wrong, there was no personalized message and it was not ’gift’ wrapped. By the
time we traced the package in her office there wasn’t any surprise left and
there was no message to it.

Then they sent across this gift voucher equivalent to the value of the book
(buying my loyalty/repeat purchase) and I said, let’s give this site another
shot. Maybe this time they would get it right. The coupon didn’t work. Repeated
attempts at emailing and calling customer service proved futile and just as I
was about to give up, I received a message from Nanditha saying there were some
technical issues as a result of which this coupon didn’t work. Upon explaining
to her the previous ’gifting’ experience I had, she assured me that it wouldn’t
happen again. In fact, the only reason it happened was because "there was overwhelming
demand for the harry potter book and they were having trouble handling
it".

So, with that assurance (and the gift voucher), I decide to increase my ticket
size by ten times and buy my wife yet another ’surprise gift’ only this time, I
decided to ship it home instead of her office. Yet again the order got screwed
up and guess what, it was the same mistake. No personalized message and no gift
wrapping.

Mind you, I had local options to buy the IPOD Nano at better prices with no
risk whatsoever but yet I chose to give Indiaplaza another shot in the hope
that they would get it right this time.

It’s not over yet. I was obviously upset and after great difficulty (since no
one picks the phone nor is prompt enough in responding to emails) I got in
touch with Nanditha wanting to understand what happened. She assured me of
compensation and that Lalitha, the "head for customer service" would
get in touch with me the very next day. A week goes by and I hear from Nirmal
who says Lalitha has been unwell, not in office and he called on her behalf to
apologise and asked me to give them a ’third chance’. Mind you, no word on the
compensation part yet but he did say he would send me the CEO’s email so that I
could share my feedback.

Few days later, I hear from yet another gentleman called Venkatesh, who
apparently felt that all this trouble I was going through was worth Rs.200 and
sends me a voucher accordingly. Now, that, I felt was insulting and also the
last straw. Add to that, he didn’t give me the CEO’s email address.

Enter Suma, customer service agent no 4 (not including lalitha) who sends
across your email address today. The strangest part in this screw up was...the
ceo’s is on the site and yet these guys act as gatekeepers and keep upsetting
the customer (me).

I wrote to Vaithee (the COO, I think) in the hope that he would have the
mindset to see why a customer would go through all this trouble to tell him all
the areas he needs to improve upon. Given the horrible experience, it surely merited
way more than a Rs.200 voucher. It’s been a few days and I haven’t heard from
him nor do I hope to.

Moral of
the story, don’t bother with indiaplaza and surely not if you have local
options and are planning to gift someone something.