Worst Experience with letsbuy

N

Nomad

Disciple
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I ordered a microwave and an induction cooker from letsbuy.com on 9th August. I am yet to receive the goods. Shopping at letsbuy has been the worst online shopping experience for me. I have spent a considerable amount of time to track the order and to get it delivered. The idea of getting it online was that it is more convenient. But this has turned out to be a nightmare.They shipped the order later than the time they promised to deliver, and that too they opted to ship via road from Delhi to Bangalore! They should have atleast chosen Air transport to save some of the delayed time. They also then sent me the wrong waybill details.

Letsbuy Customer care [proudly] states that they do not stock any of the items, and instead get it from the manufacturer when an order is received. So "it is not in their hands" if the order is delayed due to this. Also, they are now stating that the courier company's delivery time is also "not in their hands".

Letsbuy should not advertise the 4-8 working days of delivery period; instead they should mention that delivery timeline is not in their hands, and the buyer is at it's own risk of purchasing the item from them. I guess that would make life easy for them, and anybody who opts to buy from them.

I haven't received a single call from them explaining the problem or giving me an option to cancel the order.

I have recently moved to Bangalore, and was hoping to get these vital kitchen appliances asap. But letsbuy has made things really difficult.

I strongly advise people not to use letsbuy, and instead use ebay or just go out and buy stuff from a local store. Ebay has a better system (ratings) of keeping the dealers motivated for a good service. I have never experienced such problems with ebay.
 
They are shipping my order by safexpress. They had sent me an SMS saying it is DTDC, but it was actually Safexpress.

Safexpress is very unprofessional company. Their tracking is not available on their website. Instead I got to know elsewhere that it is waybill.info.

I called up Safexpress Bangalore office, but they did not pick up. Their toll free number is invalid. I finally was able to call their Delhi Office. Instead of giving me a direct answer, he gave me another mobile number in Bangalore who in turn gave me another mobile number!! Heights of inconvenience. It was quite difficult to get to the last leg as this mobile number was always busy.
 
My last 2 orders were shipped through Blue Dart. Shipped the very next day of purchase and received it the day after that.

I personally think it isn't a good idea to buy home appliances like microwaves from online stores. It's almost understood they won't have it in stock and will go through the process of ordering one from the manufacturer and then sending it to you.

Everyone is going crazy over Letsbuy just because of their coupons. Their service hasn't been really up to the mark for everyone. Even they know once they stop their coupons, no one is gonna think of buying from their website.

Anyways, I hope your issue gets resolved soon and you receive your products soon.
 
@viralbug, please explain why is it almost understood that they will not have Home appliances in stock? Why is it so obvious to you?

I am not concerned whether they keep things in stock or not. I just care about the stuff reaching my place in the mentioned time period. I don't understand why they even tell the customer about their internal operations. They try to wash away their responsibly by putting the blame on other third parties. Why is it my concern?

In the past, I had ordered an ipad, and it was the same story that they have to procure it from elsewhere. They delayed it by one day, but that wasn't so bad. I thought it was a one off case.

I would never trade convenience to coupons. Had I known this would happen, I would have never bought the stuff from them. I wish they would have invested their time and money on keeping their service level to an acceptable levels, rather than offering discounts. The coupon discount was not worth all the hassle.

I think the least they could do is to put this information on their website as to what needs to be back ordered and what is actually in stock with them. They should also advise the customer that back ordered items can take longer to deliver, so the customer is aware of the risks.

Had they been serious about their service, they wouldn't have shipped the items through road transport as the order left their facility after the committed delivery period.
 
I would go with Viralbug, it isn't a good idea to buy bigger home appliances like Microwaves, ACs, Refrigerators from online stores. Nowadays, almost all shops have free home delivery so, it's better to find some time, visit a good electronic shop, take a look at the appliance and order. If you have a 4-wheeler, take the delivery yourself; that might be of little hassle but saves time and anxiety later.

Personally, I have ordered 5-6 items from LB, every time they have used BlueDart for me, and order has reached within 3-7 days.
 
Nomad said:
@viralbug, please explain why is it almost understood that they will not have Home appliances in stock? Why is it so obvious to you?
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Experience and some common sense about how businesses like letsbuy work goes a long way ...
Nomad said:
Had they been serious about their service, they wouldn't have shipped the items through road transport as the order left their facility after the committed delivery period.
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Its an unrealistic expectation on your part to expect that they would send something really bulky like a Microwave via air shipping. The courier charges itself would work out to the cost of a lower end microwave.
 
They're are using air for heavy weight items, it's only recently they started to use road. My microwave sent through Bluedart air. But recent purchase of KENT sent through safexpress, which took 8 days to deliver in blr.

Sent from my Desire HD
 
well my take is that air or surface, pre-stocked vs stocked etc etc, all is justified when there is an open line of communication.

Nomad or anybody here would atleast expect some form of notification. On top of it, sweating out to just know where your shipment is located, is really painful.
 
@Lord Nemesis:

i) Letsbuy offered to sell household appliances with a committed delivery period of 4-8 working days.

ii) I placed an order with them.

iii) They do not deliver even after 22 days / 15 working days.

iv) I raise a concern here, and advice other members to be cautious buying from Letsbuy.

Why is this so complicated to understand who is at fault??? Instead you are blaming me for placing an order with them for kitchen appliances? I understand that you may not have any bad experience with them, but you may have it some day.. and then somebody might tell you it isn't a good idea to buy those kind of stuff online... and it is your fault..

I called their CC on the last day (8th day) of committed time to know why my order wasn't shipped. The said it would go out in the evening and I should get it in a day or two, so I guess even the CC wasn't aware that they would be using road transport.

Again, I don't care if they use road transport and if they back order their items. If I would have got my stuff on time I would have been happy.

I have been patient enough to wait for double the committed time, before bringing the issue on a public forum.

Anyways, I just had the intention of raising my concern on a public forum, and sharing my experience. May be someone can benefit from it.
 
@Nomad: I for one am always apprehensive about buying even a micro SD card from online stores. In my opinion if convenience was what you wanted, you could have walked / drove to the nearest electronic store and purchased the appliances there. Just my 2 cents.
 
Nomad said:
@Lord Nemesis:

i) Letsbuy offered to sell household appliances with a committed delivery period of 4-8 working days.

ii) I placed an order with them.

iii) They do not deliver even after 22 days / 15 working days.

iv) I raise a concern here, and advice other members to be cautious buying from Letsbuy.

Why is this so complicated to understand who is at fault??? Instead you are blaming me for placing an order with them for kitchen appliances? I understand that you may not have any bad experience with them, but you may have it some day.. and then somebody might tell you it isn't a good idea to buy those kind of stuff online... and it is your fault..

I called their CC on the last day (8th day) of committed time to know why my order wasn't shipped. The said it would go out in the evening and I should get it in a day or two, so I guess even the CC wasn't aware that they would be using road transport.

Again, I don't care if they use road transport and if they back order their items. If I would have got my stuff on time I would have been happy.

I have been patient enough to wait for double the committed time, before bringing the issue on a public forum.

Anyways, I just had the intention of raising my concern on a public forum, and sharing my experience. May be someone can benefit from it.
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No one is blaming you for ordering from them. We do agree that letsbuy is at fault here since they claimed to deliver it within a time period.

But the thing to understand here is that although people like us buy tons of things online, it still isn't a very big business. Most people would still go to the local store and buy what they want, even for small items because they aren't comfortable with buying online.

Online stores like letsbuy aren't that big, they have very limited products and you can see that from their listings as well. Keeping stock of appliances when no one will buy it just means losses for them. Forget letsbuy, I wouldn't order big appliances from ebay or any other place online. Shipping such big items would cost a bomb and the only feasible option would be surface shipping which takes a lot of time.

I think if you had a look at local stores, I'm sure you would have found the same product at a similar price. You can always bargain further. Also, it really helps when you buy appliances from local stores since they usually provide the services for warranty.

Anyways, hope you learn from this experience not to blindly trust what an online store claims. Hope your items reach you fast.
 
They shipped a 4 GB kingston pen drive which was not at all same as it was shown in the picture.So I do not trust the site entirely...
 
Nomad said:
@Lord Nemesis:

i) Letsbuy offered to sell household appliances with a committed delivery period of 4-8 working days.

ii) I placed an order with them.

iii) They do not deliver even after 22 days / 15 working days.

iv) I raise a concern here, and advice other members to be cautious buying from Letsbuy.

Why is this so complicated to understand who is at fault??? Instead you are blaming me for placing an order with them for kitchen appliances? I understand that you may not have any bad experience with them, but you may have it some day.. and then somebody might tell you it isn't a good idea to buy those kind of stuff online... and it is your fault..

I called their CC on the last day (8th day) of committed time to know why my order wasn't shipped. The said it would go out in the evening and I should get it in a day or two, so I guess even the CC wasn't aware that they would be using road transport.

Again, I don't care if they use road transport and if they back order their items. If I would have got my stuff on time I would have been happy.

I have been patient enough to wait for double the committed time, before bringing the issue on a public forum.

Anyways, I just had the intention of raising my concern on a public forum, and sharing my experience. May be someone can benefit from it.
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Sorry if it looked like I was blaming or bashing you or that I am taking sides with letsbuy. It was not my intention. In fact I have never ordered anything from letsbuy. I was just being candid about the two questions you raised. Let me just put it in a more elaborate manner.



1. Why doesn't letsbuy stock everything they sell

A. Because its not feasible for such businesses to stock everything they sell. Even a consumer can realize that by applying common sense. They sell every thing from memory cards to refrigerators, do you truly expect them to have a warehouse with everything they list in ready stock? What they do is to have tie ups with various distributor and retailers that can provide the stuff at short notices. Quite often the shipping itself is done by those distributors. Before ordering from such sites, you have to understand that things can go wrong and when they do you can blame them all you want, but little good it will do for you. The reason people buy from such sites is to avail themselves of the discount coupons. People often buy even after experiencing bad service. If you don't want to face delays or bad service then you should avoid such sites (at least after an experience). Quite frankly, buying such household appliances online is in itself a unwise thing to do. What if your item is DOA? You would have to spend on shipping to send it back.

2. Why aren't they shipping Microwave via air?

A. Because its an unrealistic expectation if you want them to spend money for air shipping heavy items. If you are buying a microwave for 5k and you are given the choice of surface shipping for 300 bucks and air shipping for 1.5~2k bucks, would you choose air shipping knowing that you have to pay for shipping, I bet most would go with surface in such an eventuality. So why would you except them to bear charges for air shipping when they are not charging you for it?
 
@Lord Nemesis.

Both your points are valid points. But these two points are not my or any customer's concern. These are Letsbuy's internal concerns. I don't mind they not stocking items before making a sale, or if they ship via surface.. I just care about getting my stuff within the duration of time that they mention.. If things go wrong, I expect them to inform me and give me other options like cancelling the order, or asking me if I am willing to wait. They shouldn't expect the customer to wait endlessly after making the payment.

@viralbug: I wouldn't go far and generalize that buying heavy items online is not a convenient option. Normally, buying online is considered convenient. Just because Letsbuy has screwed up my order, I wouldn't stop buying heavy items online from all stores. Probably ezone and flipkart are better, but I haven't tried them out. In fact, I have ordered 2 LCDs (40in and 32in) in the past from ebay without any issues.

I called Safexpress office today morning. The person seemed to be alarmed on hearing about this particular order and said he would definitely deliver the goods today. May be Letsbuy has put some pressure on them through their head office. I trust Letsbuy with my money though.. whether late or on time they do deliver the goods. Next time I will keep this experience in mind while ordering from letsbuy.. if it is something which I am willing to wait, I will go ahead, else I will look at other options. Lesson learnt.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

Update:

I just received the goods today.
 
^^ My replies were for the questions that you raised about how they conduct business. From a consumer standpoint I completely agree with you on that they should be responsive and let customers know what's going on. In fact I myself had a similar bad experience myself on another e-com site. Sadly that is how things seem to happen in our country and there isn't much we can do about it till our judicial system improves to the point that these guys start fearing that there would be consequences for bad service and we have ourselves to blame for the current state of affairs.
 
Nomad said:
@Lord Nemesis.
Both your points are valid points. But these two points are not my or any customer's concern. These are Letsbuy's internal concerns. I don't mind they not stocking items before making a sale, or if they ship via surface.. I just care about getting my stuff within the duration of time that they mention.. If things go wrong, I expect them to inform me and give me other options like cancelling the order, or asking me if I am willing to wait. They shouldn't expect the customer to wait endlessly after making the payment.
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If you haven't had any prior experience with online shopping then... Welcome to the Club !!!
We live in India, where more often, the customer has to follow up since he "needs" the product to be shipped. Even if you escalate any issue, your case might be taken up (if u haggle like a whining biatch) and processed instantly. There is no assurance that this might not happen again. We have some really loose rules when it comes to such matters. And to top that these dealers / online peeps have their bases covered up so well that if u slap a legal notice they have so much paperwork that they bite u back !!!

Long story short.. if u need something pronto.. go to your nearby store and haggle... u might get a better deal :)
 
djmykey said:
@Nomad: I for one am always apprehensive about buying even a micro SD card from online stores. In my opinion if convenience was what you wanted, you could have walked / drove to the nearest electronic store and purchased the appliances there. Just my 2 cents.
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Yaar dont be so finicky.

Offlate i been ordering all the mem sticks and cards from lsb and their likes only.

sudeep_hm said:
They shipped a 4 GB kingston pen drive which was not at all same as it was shown in the picture.So I do not trust the site entirely...
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Can u pls share the link from lsb regarding that deal?

or if u can, links from the net showing what u ordered and what you received ??
 
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