Cafegadgets.com gets it wrong all the time

While it might not be visible to a lot of people on the internet, but my being from an an e-commerce background I can’t help but think how cafegadgets.com is ruining the whole e-commerce experience of Indian internet users. The fact that the number of Indian internet users is increasing everyday, and more people are getting hooked on to e-commerce, it is both, surprising and sad to realize that these guys over at cafegadgets seem to get the whole concept of order processing and customer service absolutely wrong. The major problem with this is that a user’s trust from shopping online is lost, and this directly impacts the other e-commerce guys in India; as well as the fact that if India really has to grow the e-commerce industry then the best practices(as seen on major online retailers in other countries) need to be established first.

Why I write this, is because I have had two *forgettable* occasions when I had to shop at cafegadgets, and while I could ignore the first time, the same experience second time made me write this blog post (on the other hand I wrote this post about Inkfruit.com guys immediately after my first purchase with them !). You have to understand that “impatience is the new buzz”, and “third and last chance” has become “once and never again” for the new generation :)

Coming back to CafeGadgets, my first order took 20 days to be delivered (after about 4-5 telephone calls that the customer service guys picked up, 10-15 calls dying after “no answer” at the other end, and a bunch of mails being exchanged with the customer service reps as well as some top-level guys, and finally some jugaad to get my message through to the best possible authority). And yes, my order consisted of just a computer mouse and a keyboard. Now, when you are not selling any personalized stuff, item availability is either a “YES” or a “NO” and maybe “Will ship in X days”. Simple. So, it grew on me, why I had to wait 20 days to get something delivered, which is either in stock or not. So, either take the order for such an item or say no. Anyways, problems like these arise, and for once they can be neglected / overlooked. But, what if the same thing happens again ??!! Email them ? Call customer support ?? I tried both, but this time less frequently (going by the previous experience). And yes, this time I ordered a set of Sennheiser headphones (which BTW, are being thrown away by these guys, dirt cheap…and I suggest you order one asap !). It hasn’t been that long(5 days to be precise) ordering those headphones, but I just thought…“something these guys have put on sale..has to be in stock for sure…in fact in stock more than they are able to handle…that’s why the sale !”. Not good…definitely not impressive.

I just wish, someone from CafeGadgets reads this, and does something about my order, and more about how they are actually going about their e-commerce endeavor. These guys need to change / improve a lot and FAST, else they will be just another name in the past.