Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy made the best of it, though.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: For the online shopping portal Snapdeal, a bad review that went viral on the social media, is an important learning curve in their growth trajectory.
It all started with a status update of a customer, Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy, from Mumbai, on Facebook, complaining that he got a soap bar inside the box of a Samsung Galaxy smartphone he ordered through Snapdeal.
His Facebook friends shared the post on their wall with a hashtag #soapdeal and in no time, the post went viral.
Krishnamurthy took to his social media, and wrote: “The biggest surprise is not yet over. Here comes the big one!”
Matters were finally resolved when on the morning of November 1, a delivery came through with the actual goods Krishnamurthy had ordered: a Samsung smartphone, meant to be a surprise gift for his wife.
But here’s the twist: the delivery was not from Snapdeal. Instead, it was courtesy of Hindustan Unilever Mumbai, the manufacturers of the Vim product soap bars and detergent, who perhaps wanted to thank Krishnamurthy for providing great publicity for their products.
Krishnamurthy, also got a complementary gift too, from Hindustan Unilever : wrapped inside the box were two bottles of Vim liquid detergent, probably to complement the bar of Vim soap.
It got to be a great deal finally for Krishnamurthy: Snapdeal refunded his money for the smartphone, acknowledged their mistake.
So, Krishnamurthy got for free a Samsung smartphone, a Vim soap bar and 2 different varieties of liquid dish wash. Not a bad deal for a few FB posts.
Krishnamurthy noted on his FB (sic): “In continuation of my post regarding the snapdeal issue,here’s a bit of good news to talk about!!!:)Thanks to the power of social media websites like “FB” where nearly 19,000 people and still counting have shared my status which made Snapdeal sit and look up. The good news is that Snapdeal have refunded the full amount of money paid by me. Their media in-charge contacted me through phone and apologized for the goof up. I told him a couple of things as under:
The concerned supplier partner should not only be blacklisted but necessary legal action taken against them to put them behind bars or pay heavy penalty which the company assured me that they are doing.
“As the company said that the courier is also involved, i suggested the company should have their own courier service which they said they are implementing in a couple of months.
“I also suggested that a process should be put in place where the goods sold should be inspected by snapdeal as to their quality , genuineness, and that they are in working order. The company assured me that they are going to implement such process soon and put their entire online retailing to international standards.
“I told them that if such processes are not put in place people will lose faith in online retail companies and i also told them to refrain from offering fake discounts and put up only genuine discounts.
“So i sum up stating that the issue stand sorted out with the company and wish them well and great online buying experience to people, but wish they implement the control process.”
1 Comment
So what was snapdeal doing all these years? Doing business the effed-up standards way!!!! Losses would surely mount heavily for such comments made by snapdeal to the customer. The only way out for them is to sell the business, make the buck and open another website, play the same game and sell it to some foreigner!!!