Flipkart now ‘flipped’

The constant need to check on the delivery tracker is a form of OCD that comes with online shopping. Every day, I’d religiously log-in once in the morning and once at night to see if there was any progress

Flipkart was India’s first online market place, this website sparked off a trend amongst Indians and changed the way people shopped. It offered the people various options like cash-on-delivery, 30-day return policy, so on and so forth. Their aim was to meet the customer’s needs and leave the customer with a smile. Recently, there have been a series of instances where the customer is left with a curt call which tells him that his or her order has been delayed initially and later cancelled.

The company had built its reputation up as one of India’s biggest and possibly the best retailers. Many people have pondered over the question as to how this website could give the customer amazing discounts and still survive the market’s cut-throat competitors like Amazon or e-Bay. In an article by Swapnil Mathur that was published on Digit magazines web portal thinkdigit.com, the authors says that Flipkart earlier was a retailer who used to stock the goods in a ware house of their own.

This made sure that they had a list of all the products they have in-stock. But, due to the various discounts they offered the website was spiraling into a loss. Hence, they changed their business model. In their new business model they shifted from retailer to a broker. Now the website just mediates between the original seller and the customer and has no control over the sales. According to Swapnil, this new business model turns out to be just another way to test the customer’s patience.

His excerpt from the web site which cites his agony:

“On August 1st 2013, I placed an order for a Microsoft Desktop 2000 Wireless Keyboard Mouse Combo, after coming home to find that Dexter, my two month old Labrador pup had chewed through the cables of my existing keyboard and mouse. After discovering that my favourite keyboard’s cable had been ravaged into more pieces than a victim in a poorly made Hollywood horror flick, I ordered myself a nice wireless combo from Flipkart. Upon placing the order, I was intimated through an online tracker that the Combo would be delivered by August 10th.Though ten days was a long time to wait, I figured I’ll wait for it and just use my iPad for whatever work I might have to do at home.

The constant need to check on the delivery tracker is a form of OCD that comes with online shopping. Every day, I’d religiously log-in once in the morning and once at night to see if there was any progress. Their rather neatly designed tracker maintained that my order had been placed and was being processed. However, on August 8, the tracker still showed no progress, so I called Flipkart’s absolutely unhelpful helpline to ask about the status of my order. The customer representative kept repeating that my order was being procured and would be delivered on time. It was now August 11th and one more phone call later, they said that it would now take three more days. On August 12, I got an email from the company saying that my order had been cancelled. Highly annoyed, I called up their ‘customer helpline’ number again and was told that since a refund had been initiated, there was nothing they could do.

I got a call from the Flipkart customer service department to ‘confirm that my order was cancelled’ and upon pressing for a reason, I was told that ‘the product was no more available’. When asked to go to the website and see how it is still listed as available from not one, but FIVE sellers, their representative told me “but it is not available at the price of Rs. 1595 that you had ordered it for. Since it is now only available for Rs. 1900 and not for Rs. 1595, we have to cancel your order”.

Swapnil Mathur’s case sadly is not a singular one, many people have come forward citing similar problems; the company takes the order, delays it for as long as possible and ultimately refunds the money. Flipkart has had a radical change in its priorities and for now it seems that customer satisfaction is no longer ‘numero uno’ on their priority list.