Dec 12, 2006 01:18 PM
2680 Views
(Updated Dec 14, 2006 12:00 PM)
My tryst with online shopping started in Oct’04 when I bought a digital camera (~Rs. 11000/-) and a butterfly massager (~Rs.150/-) from eBay. I received the camera in good condition the 2nd item in burnt out condition. Even though I complained with photo of the received item, the seller did not agree and eBay did not help. They even removed my negative complaint of the massager seller without my consent. I was disillusioned (what if this had happened with the costly item??). Even though, later I did buy some small items from sify and rediff and indiatimes online, generally I kept away.
This report is on my attempt to purchase a DVD player from “Rediff Auctions” on 23/11/06. I bid for “LATEST DVD PALYER WITH USB & SD/MMC CARD READER SLOT”,won and made payment of Rs 1848/- through internet banking within two days. However I was shocked to find that after three days of receipt of payment, my delivery was cancelled. On enquiry at rediff customer care, I was informed that the item was out of stock. But they had no answer to why an out of stock item had been offered for auction. I did receive my money back after another four days.
A search on the net revealed that 5 nos of the same item (Item number: 300045152256), with thesame spelling mistake of “Palyer”, same hue/color of advt./pic and same description/specs etc., had been put up for sale on eBay.in on 3/12/06. Just the seller name (or was it the same seller with a different name) and price had changed. I investigated the seller of this item on rediff namely “All about satisfaction”, and found out that even though this seller had about 58 feedback (+ & -) credited to his name, you could get to see only one feedback. This too was an eulogy of the virtues of the seller (this was later rectified by rediff upon my complaint). Also Sirindia – another shopping site –flashed this message for this seller “Sorry !!!! This Vendor Is Temporarily Suspended”. A further search revealed that the said DVD player was of Chinese make (Shenshen Goldstar) and costs just US$ 24 per piece if imported in bulk.
From the above it is clear that all’s not well with online shopping in India. I have seen many feedbacks where items have been declared out of stock once it is sold. None of the shopping sites seem to have any control over the sellers nor is there any mechanism to take the errant sellers to task - “All about satisfaction” is still selling on rediff. The motives of the sellers, who resort to such practices, also need to be questioned. In this era of cybercrimes could this be considered as a way to extract the bank account/ credit card details of the unwary buyer? The need of the hour is a fool-proof system to authenticate any seller (at present a blacklisted seller on one site could comeback with a new/old name on any of the shopping sites).
This objective of this sharing is not to drive away prospective buyers from online shopping but to make them wary and more discerning.
