Shopclues Online Shopping is Risky – Critical Review

Shopclues is an online shopping mall with many setbacks 

Be ware while choosing an  online shopping portal like shopclues for your online product needs. Online shopping have both advantages and disadvantages. The positive side is the buyer have the wide choice of product to choose from and have affordable price tags. The major disadvantage is reliability of the seller.  The customer must take care in choosing the right online shopping portal. Do not be taken away with the fancy websites with breath-taking offers. Do not be taken away by a well designed and beautifully crafted online shopping portals like shopclues.

Online Shopping Malls – Helpful Tips

Carefully analyse the inherent drawbacks in an online shopping websites. The better practice  is to read reviews on online shopping portals before choosing one. Here again there is a problem. Reviews will both be negative and positive. I have not seen 5  star positive reviews about any product or service in a product  review website. Then what  yardsticks to choose for an online shopping portal is a big question. Here are some tips.

• Which ever portal you choose for online shopping, select the product and look for cash on delivery option. If available opt this payment method. At least your money is safe till you receive the product.
• Do not just decide a shopping portal that sells product at lowest  price. Look for inherent or hidden costs like shipping charges and taxes. Evaluate other competitive and qualified websites before making a ‘purchase’ decision. ..

 My experience with Shopclues

I ordered a sony bravia TV from shopclues.com on 31st December. The payment process went through smoothly.Shopclues.com promptly sent me an email saying that they despatched the product through their courier partner  http://7horses.co.in/ with tracking number 131449,So far it is well and organized with shopclues.

An extract of their email.

The real dirty game with Shopclues started now

After a day I  checked the courier portal for tracking id  and find no results showing up. I was surprised. Waited a day more and tried again. I could not trace my product. I gave a call to shopclues help line. A sweet voice responded promptly with a trained customer care message. They asked me to wait for 48 hours and they will get back to me., Why I have bolded the ’48’ hours,  I will let you know. I waited 48 hours as requested and called again. The first question they asked is ‘Have I received the product’. I said ‘no’. They then asked me to wait another 48 hours. This process of asking and 48 hour  continued for three weeks. Surprisingly they use to call every day and ask me whether I received the product.One day I suddenly saw ‘product delivered’  on my account page with shopclues website. This added fuel to the fire. Afterwords a series of emails came asking me to evaluate the product, asking me to give a  feed back. When I called them and told that I have not received the product, they told that the product is delivered according to the information they had and they will let me know latest status in 48 hours. Then I took up the case seriously a wrote a strong email telling them I will legally go ahead.

Then shopclues team split into two groups. One group asking me to wait 48 hours and the other asking me whether I received the product. They never told me the exact problem with their courier partner nor they gave me proof of delivery. In the mean time I went through the google search and found surprising things. I saw on the websites that FBI  arrested  the co-founder and  CEO  of shopclues Mr.Sandeep Aggarwal in a money laundering fraud.  This news was highlighted in many news papers. There were many complaints logged on shopclues by customers on many forums and complaint boards.

I normally ignore these complaint  websites because there will be both positive and negative reviews remarks on these websites. This time negative feed back on shopclues gave me new insights on online shopping.

After about a month shopclues staff informed me that they traced the product from their courier partner and their courier partner returned the product to them. This has happened after I tweeted to  another founder member of shopclues ‘Radhika Aggarwal’ to look into the matter or else they will face the consequences for already damaged reputation of shopclues. I do not know which trick worked and finally got my refund.

The bottom line of this whole episode is to caution customers before they go to on online shopping. If customers are careful before buying a product through online shopping they at least save their money. In today’s world , it is difficult to avoid net shopping. Online shopping saves money and time. Thee will be a tremendous amount of product choice in an online shopping. If customer take caution and care like

• Opting for cash on delivery option if available for payment
• going through reviews and evaluating carefully the details of the company from which they are buying.
• Protection details offered by the online portals for the spend
• checking on sellers details on the portal and contacting the seller directly before buying
• checking whether the seller have physical address and phone number. Checking on whether the seller have a website. checking on whether the seller have a long-standing reputation with the online shopping 
• Checking payment gateway authenticity

The most trusted online websites that I recommend is Amazon USA, / Amazon India and eBay. They have detailed protection plans and seller details. They allow you to contact seller for all your queries. Shopclues does not give any information about the seller nor the buyer can contact the seller. The website is gorgeous and have good navigation facility. But what is lacking at shopclues is the coördination between departments passing on information between different departments. Customer care, help care and higher-ups act on their own and give different answers for the same query. The 48 hour waiting for each query is painful  In short, better to avoid shopclues even though they offer a competitive price for their products, If still some one wishes to take chances with shopclues, opt for cash on delivery products. So that your money is safe and you need not worry about refund process..  

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