'Fried' Indeed!!

Whimsical at best and callous at worst are the two prominent attitudes any hapless customer will encounter if he / she ever has the misfortune of shopping at this site. They seem to embody the Indian love for pepper but seem to have stuck with the other end i.e. "fry"ing their customer’s happiness.

The site started with all pomp and show on 4th January with a promotion of pepperfry points worth Rs. 200 that gave a flat off of that much amount for new buyers registering on their website. When people did so and went to purchase stuff, all they got was an error page thrown at them post payment. To add to the woes the whimsical bit started just then. Sensing a mad rush, the site promptly changed its promotions. A buyer who was getting a flat Rs. 200 off was then needed to buy a higher product such that pepperfry points could be used only above Rs. 200. So the minimum purchase for any product thus became Rs. 200. All this happened within a space of 5 hours. So much for customer acquisition, values and running a marketing promotion.

For the poor souls who were able to successfully place an order, the ordeal began from then on. Even though shipment was with the courier guy he could not deliver. Why!! These guys had completely goofed up on the addresses and printed the lines as per their will. So for some the 1st line was missing, for some the 2nd, for some the 3rd and so on. I was unlucky to have the 2nd line missed out, so had to continuously followup with the courier boy for my delivery. Truly a ’fryin’ experience.

Any venture in ecommerce should be ready to traffic on the first day, be sensitive to customer issues and atleast print the addresses and ship the orders properly. The experience should not be nightmarish that would scare them to ever shop at the website again.

Pepperfry, unfortunately, has done just that. With ecommerce sites, dime a dozen, debuting every other day, separating the chaff from the wheat is becoming really difficult. Not in this case as the site itself seems to have scared a lot of customers on the opening day itself.

Unless they reinvent the wheel, stick to their policies and are honourable to their customers across all service levels, its unlikely that repeat customers are going to throng their website. Atleast I aint one of them!!!