My e / q-Commerce God died young. Payment issues, non-deliveries, botched-up deliveries, delays, mis-representation and sub-standard quality that is how I ordinarily know most market-places and web-aggregators.
Wanting to sell my car over their portal, I consented to a sale price with a CarDekho representative and paid him an amount towards an allegedly outstanding traffic challan. I should have checked, on the e-challan portal, the veracity of his statement or paid the fine myself. But I didn’t as I was destined to play that proverbial sucker-round-the-corner that day. The guy became inaccessible after taking the money. Later, I came to know that the man had left the company. Its only after a few posts on the social media that I got my money back.
Erratic winds must be blowing my mind off that fateful day when I ordered breakfast for an old school-friend, in another city, who I hadn’t met for long. The order was never delivered but Swiggy maintained that it was. Not to let go, I demanded a proof of delivery and asked for the GPS coordinates of the delivery-person on the date / time of the so-called delivery. Instead of providing the same, Swiggy fobbed me off by saying that since there was a delay in reporting the issue, they couldn’t offer any resolution. The breakfast still remains undelivered.
You will remember (old folks, especially) that famous, emotive tagline “We-also-make-steel” of that holier-than-thou group. Today, the tagline stands re-worded to “We-also-make-fools”. I ordered grocery on Bigbasket, paid via net-banking, the stuff was brought to my fifth-floor apartment only to be taken back because the delivery-person’s manifest showed COD. My showing him the screenshot of payment confirmation could have moved mountains but not the delivery-person. Evidently, in the online world, the system-generated data is supreme. Many exchanges later, I realized that seeking a resolution of the issue is like seducing an elephant. There is no pleasure in it and I run the risk of getting crushed down there.
Ordinarily I avoid buying online the stuff which I want to have a good look and feel of (carpets, clothes etc.). As I had relocated to another city, driven by urgency, I ordered a carpet on Amazon and paid upfront. There was an inordinate delay in delivery of the item about which I complained to Amazon guys, conveying my intentions to cancel the order and write a big negative review. Surprisingly, within a day or day I got a call directly from the supplier / manufacturer. He, initially, was all politeness but turned hostile as he learned about the possibility of earning a negative review. From his accent I could guess that he was from my state (UP) and that too from the eastern side. Forgetting whatever little couth-ness I had left in me and instantly recalling my student days in Prayagraj, I responded to him with firm promises of relationships with his mother, sisters and daughters. Ideally, like a good customer, I should have reported the incident to Amazon but realized that these digital mercenaries do a zilch when it comes to the physicality of the delivery wars as they are fully dependent on the suppliers / manufacturers. Plus, to them, I was just another brick in the wall. God is kind. The carpet was eventually delivered.
The agony knows no boundaries. Not even the international ones. The app-based services which operate internationally can haunt you even overseas. During one of my visits to Uganda I did not have a car for my ritualistic weekend visits to the casino. I booked a cab on Uber (thankfully Ola hasn’t spread its tentacles there yet). Lo and behold ! The app showed two unpaid visits in India. Seriously ? Unpaid visits ? Which Uber driver will let you step out of his cab without paying up. As I knew for sure that these were some kind of charges cooked up at the backend by Uber, I didn’t consent to pay. Predictably, my booking was not confirmed and I had to skip my tryst with the three-cards poker that day.
The harassment is not limited only to marketplaces and aggregators. The online sales platforms of some B2C companies too can make a Ukraine of customers. Besides making me run around their offices immediately after the first Coronavirus-driven lockdown, HDFC-Life’s digital savviness scaled newer heights when they engaged me in a 25-minutes chat on their chatbot (euphemistically called Virtual Assistant) for a death claim . Seriously, 25 minutes ? That’s the day I started better empathizing with the American soldiers for what they went through in the never-ending wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It’s hilarious that the MD of HDFC-Life is often found in the media, enlightening the lesser mortals on the insurance industry’s role & responsibilities.
Well, these are some of my personal experiences over a period of time. Though nothing gives me the confidence that others wouldn’t have found themselves in a similar predicament, I always thought that I had some faults in my stars and all this was happening to me singularly. I did toy with the idea of consulting an astrologer who could lay bare my e-horror-scope and suggest remedies to a digital-immigrant like me. But when I learnt about similar travails of quite a few of my friends and relatives, I heaved a (morbid) sigh of relief.
Where does the problem reside. In India, we are mentally reconciled to incompetence at multiple levels when it comes to high-volume-low-ticket businesses. These platforms, as a strategy, choose to not to engage with an aggrieved customer beyond a viable point. Generally, I indulge in high-decibel criticism of issues involving cricket, politics and insurance but when it comes to these platforms, I always have been too lazy. Despite that, as of today, I have crossed swords with a food-deliverer, two grocery-deliverers, two used-car-aggregators, a life insurer and a cab-aggregator. Since I find myself incompetent in many areas of life, I am reasonably forgiving of a basic level of incompetence which are intrinsic to the sales / delivery propositions of these platforms. It’s the next-level issues which heckle me.
The first port of call for an aggrieved customer is invariably the Customer-care section in the app. If it’s a portal, one faces those formidable chatbots. After a failed exchange of texts, one is led to a Customer-care Executive. Needless to say, the poor executive, another brick in the wall, is always ready with templated responses. Having painstakingly voiced what one had already written in the exchange of texts, one is informed that the rules do not permit the kind of resolution one is seeking. If the issue is about refund or return or exchange, the responses are mostly condescending. If the complaint is about the misconduct of a delivery person / cab-driver, one is met, once again, with a stock response which invariably starts with an apology of apology followed by an assurance of some (never-to-be-taken) action against the delinquent. A persistent customer is advised to write an email to an ID which, ironically, has customer-care / customer-support as a pre-fix. One wonders if an email can achieve what the text and the voice could not. Evidently, everyone is trying to get the monkeys off their backs. No wonder most customers give up, lost in this labyrinth called customer care.
I personally feel that an individual customer is totally inconsequential in the eco-system of the online retail businesses which are in the high-volume-low- ticket game. In a scenario where almost all e / q-commerce platforms are haemorrhaging money, any focus on an individual’s grievance is viewed as an incremental cost and, therefore, avoidable. After all, what sales value could a customer leave with if she / he decides to leave one such platform.
Can something be done. Yes. Will something be done. No. As e / q-Commerce continues to gain greater traction and enters more and more areas of our lives, an individual in the retail space will be rendered more and more inconsequential with each passing day of sale.
Given the situation, have I stopped buying via these apps ? No. I am a prisoner of my laziness and cannot not get most goods and services delivered to me at home. To that end, I bring myself to disregard the fact that every incremental purchase on these platforms makes me incrementally hypertensive. As the list of products and services offered through these apps is getting longer and innovative every day, I would not be surprised if a service to scratch one’s scrotum actually sneaks into their offerings one day. As I am not very confident about my aging hands, I may need such a service in future.