Do you dare to shop online?

Do you dare to shop online? Do you have a good or bad experience of online shopping? I notices most people around me are not aware of stuffs available on the online shops. Some of them knows about it, but does not dare to shop online. Here I am going to share my online shopping story. Hope this will guide you to have a good online shopping experience.

My first online shopping – Buying Dell computers online

First stuff I purchased online is my Dell Inspiron 1520 notebook, which I currently use to write this post. In Nov 2007, I planned to buy a notebook PC, arranged money and decided to go for Dell. Then in India Dell was available for purchase online only. I booked one for me, emailed CC details to the account manager and I got it delivered on my doorstep. Good product for a good price. I was happy and a complete simple and easy process. I spent few hours on the computer only for this deal. Currently Dell is available at some authorized dealers. If you want to buy one, then go to an authorized dealer or buy online. Don’t go to a normal computer shop to buy a Dell PC. They don’t pay money to Dell for the 1 year NBD on site warranty. If your PC goes wrong, then you need to pay lot of money again to avail the warranty. More critical, if you buy a notebook.

Indiaplaza.in

After few months of my first online purchase, I came to know about a 100% money back offer at Indiaplaza.in. If you buy something for X rupees (up to 5000), then they were giving you a gift voucher of Rs X after two months and which can be used against purchase of Rs 2X+ within one month. I wanted to buy a Sony Ericsson K750i phone. Along with Vasanth and Gajapathy (my past colleagues at Vernalis Systems) we purchased some stuffs for Rs 5000, which includes 3 Nokia bluetooth devices (two for Vasanth and one for Gajapathy). I purchased a USB mini vacuum cleaner to help the amount to cross 5000. Vasanth was the lead of this online shopping at Indiaplaza project. We were using his credit card and also I used his credit card while buying my Dell notebook. When we got the gift voucher, SE K750i was not available at Indiaplaza.in. So I decided to buy SE K790i with 3.2 MP Cyber-shot camera. It was a good deal. The mobile was priced at Rs 11520. And I got benefit of Rs 3333 on it as per the gift voucher share. The good point to note here is, I got the delivery in just 2 days.

Recently, I found that Chennai Super Kings have released very nice t-shirts for fans, and that costs Rs 329. I decided to buy one. While CSK was asking Rs 38 for shipping, Indiaplaza asked Rs 30. It’s a matter of just 8 rupees. But I decided to go for Indiaplaza.in, because of my good past experience. But that decision seemed to be a wrong decision. They did not started shipping the product after one week passed. I created a support ticket, but did not get any reply in after days passed. I called them once, no one picked up the phone. I called once again and someone responded it and suddenly hung up. Then at the third attempt, they responded and said that the product is out of stock and will be shipped in two days. Then I got the product after few days and came to know that the product is directly shipped by CSK merchandise partner two days before I call them. But the bad support experience will not allow me to recommend Indiaplaza to anyone.

Buying at Future Bazaar

I wanted to buy a USB thumb drive during year 2008 and I found a good deal at Future Bazaar. I purchased it and without any problem I got the product delivered. Recently in Jan 2010, I purchased few more products like copper base stainless steel tope (vessel), luggage bag, bath towels. The advantage is most of the product has free shipping. And they provide at the same price which you can get at Big Bazaar. Their refund/return policy is good. Their customer service is outstanding. In my recent order, I got one towel, but they did not ship another towel due to unavailability of the product at their warehouse. They contacted me to wait for few days and when they felt it’s not possible to get that product soon, then offered me few good options in lieu of the original order. They use Blue Dart courier, my favorite courier – faster and safe delivery. You may find few good offers there. So keep watching the website and enjoy your online shopping. Recommended.

Buying at Ebay.in

When I was in my B. Tech first semester, I came to know about Baazee.com via a friend. I registered there, but did not had any purchase. Then it acquired by Ebay and re-branded as Ebay.in. I planned to buy a 2 GB M2 card for my phone in Dec 2008. I searched on Ebay.in, saw the feedback of the seller, ordered the product and got it delivered. After that I made many purchases at Ebay.in. I purchased a cooling pad for my laptop, my Nikon D3000 DSLR camera (Rs 27,000), SD card from different sellers via ebay.in. At ebay.in, ebay.in does not sell any product. That’s just a market place. There are thousands of sellers who sell their product. So, if you are buying any product at ebay.in see the feedback of the seller carefully then buy.

I bought a washing machine online

I wanted to buy a washing machine. I went to a electronics and home appliances store and after looking to few items, decided to buy a fully automatic front load IFB washer. The salesman said it will cost around Rs 17,000. But when we finally asked for the product another day, they said that the price has increased and will cost Rs 17500. Then I saw that the product is available for online shopping on the IFB website, which was priced at Rs 17300. I purchased there and in a week they delivered the product at our doorstep with few IFB branded wash enhancer and machine descaling product as free gift. If I would have bought it from the store, then I could not have got those free gifts and I need to pay Rs 100 or 200 to get the machine delivered to our home. It was a good deal and I strongly recommend this.

Buying Silk Sarees and Dresses from Chennai

I have stayed 2 years in Chennai. I know that Chennai is a good place to find good silk sarees. There are many good and big saree houses like The Chennai Silks, Nalli, Sri Kumaran Stores and RMKV etc. I have bought one raw silk saree for my mother from Nalli 100 when I was there. Recently I wanted to know what are the good sarees are available in Chennai. Then I found that RMKV sells sarees online. They are shipping sarees worldwide. I showed those sarees to my mother. She wanted to buy most of the sarees, but we know it’s not possible to buy all of them. After shortlisting few, we decided to buy a casual chiffon saree, which was priced at Rs 710. The shipping charge was Rs 109 to ship from Chennai to Cuttack. So, we paid Rs 819 in total. My mother says these type sarees cost Rs 800 to 1000 here at Cuttack. If you can get one in around Rs 800 sitting at home, then it’s a good deal. And to amaze me, I got the saree delivered in just 66 hour 20 minutes (in just three days). They use Blue Dart courier which is again my favorite.

I highly recommend RMKV. But I want to warn all men, that don’t tell about this website to your mother, sister, wife or girl friend. Otherwise there is a great chance of a (or more ) hole(s) in your pocket. Click here to read more about shopping sarees online.

Bindaas Bargain – One deal each day

I knew about this website before many days, but never tried this. Recently, one day I found a cute deal. It was “USB Gizmo Combo: Mini USB Flower Desk Fan + Ladybug 4-port USB 2.0 Hub” at just Rs 249 and no shipping charge. I ordered for the item. I am waiting the item to be delivered to me, as they are using a courier which I hate most for the unnecessary delay. Their name is First Flight, and I think they should re-brand them as Last Local. Got the products delivered and are good.

I checked the USB hub and got disappointed. I am disappointed that the USB hub only works as a power connector. It works for the fan came with this deal, charges mobile. But does not do any kind of data transfer. I can’t access files in my mobile phones, USB thumb drives, external hard disks etc. So, be careful while buying anything from them.

I just gave a comment on their website, that my USB hub is not working. And they give lot of interest to replace this. Even I lost the original package of the product, still they agree to replace this. This customer service seems to be great. Let’s see how the replacement works.

Update Finally they replaced the USB hub. The new one is working great. They provided 100% of interest, effort and cost for this replacement, whereas I provided 0% of everything they provided. Highly recommended!

And if you want to buy some products from Bindaas Bargain, then please click here and register. If you register by clicking here, then I will get few points. If you buy something, then I will get few more points. If I get more points, then I am get some free gifts.

There is another website, called 24 hours loot (24hoursloot.com).They run a deal each day similar to Bindaas Bargain. I came to know about this recently, so never tried yet. Their history says that they had some cool deals. So you can watch them too.

Yepme Shopping; Buying shoes online

This website claims that they sell branded items at huge discount. I wanted to buy a reebok shoe from them. Do you think buying shoe online is difficult? I also think that. But in USA and other developed county there are many successful online shoe businesses. So why should not we try that here? I looked for old Reebok carton (someone stole those shoes in train, while I was traveling to Chennai) for the size. It says US 8, UK 7 and Euro (forgot the size). ‘US 8’ was written in big letters, as compared to other. So I asked for Size 8 while ordering the shoe (they had not mentioned neither US nor UK nor Euro). They shipped me US size 9, UK size 8. Anyway, it fitted well to my foot. I spend Rs 1900 for that shoe, but when I saw that, it did not look like worth for Rs 1900. I could have got a better shoe at Rs 1500, when Reebok provides 40% flat discount (this is how I got a good shoe for Rs 1500, and that got stolen in the train after using it for few months). Even the shoe I bought for Yepme is not available anywhere except Yepme. But it looks like original Reebok product and came in a original Reebok carton. I guess Yepme gets these low quality, low cost branded shoes as a partnership with Reebok. Anyways, I never recommend it.

If you want to buy shoes online you can go to bigshoebazaar.com or reebok online shop. Bigshoebazaar.com has good collections and good discounts on products on sale. If you donate a wearable old shoe, you can get a Rs 1000 gift voucher.

Shop in the US from India

If you are searching for a product, which is not available in India, but in the US, then you can buy that product in the US sitting at your home or office in India. Go to 20North.com and buy the product very easily and the product will be delivered at your doorstep. Many good products are available there. I bought a Nikon DSL camera bag, tripod and cleaning kit there. However the shipping is bit higher, if you compare it with the product price. But it’s true that they ship from the US, so is the shipping cost.

Here I expressed my experience and thoughts. But you should shop online carefully at your own risk. Please make sure the site is secure (look for SSL certificate, https:// in the address bar) while providing your payment details. I may expand this post or have a new post with my new online shopping experiences. You follow this blog, keep visiting to this blog in every week, in worst cases every month. You can subscribe to the feed too. And I welcome you to share your experiences too.

The ID of this post is 404. This post should not be found, but I hope this post will be one popular post on this blog.

Update:
Recently I created a website, “Where to buy online in India? (wheretobuyonline.in)“, where you can ask any question related to online shopping in India and you will get answers from other users. This is a community powered Q&A website on online shopping in India. You can answer to other questions too. By asking questions and answering to the questions, you will earn reputation points. Soon, we are going to introduce rewards for users who able to get earn reputation points. So, you can easily dare to shop online with help of other users in the community.