Why I deleted Flipkart mobile application after 5 years
Intersection point
2018 was a unique year by all means, for Indian commerce. For ages, India’s domestic trade was defined by its offline and physical constituents — Shops, Large hyperlocal stores, factories, etc..
But in just 10 years Flipkart well supported by Amazons of the world shook the traditional establishments with wow-how-many-zeros-are-in -billion, largest single FDI of $16B. Even 4 days back Aramco’s S15B i-will-take-your-debt-burden Reliance deal couldn’t match e-commerce valuations. Long Flipkart was the poster boy of Indian technology prowess, and like infosys, it took all advantage for its position.
E-commerce Journey
Multiple newer and path-breaking ideas from engineers, digital marketers, coders, pushed i-only-shop-from-my -neighborhood store generation, to explore the the-shop-while-you-stick-at-your-home concept. I am putting 3 real actions from it- All revolves around @Bezos philosophy of PUTTING CUSTOMER FIRST.
1- Cash on delivery — COD was the first major idea, which changed how we saw online shopping. It brought the trust component of receiving goods without knowing the seller. You pay only once you get the package.
2) Replace or return if you don't like it- Return/replacement was the biggest game-changer. in COD you pay first without opening the package. What would you do, in case you don't like the product after paying for it? The answer was simple- You return or replace it. Though it was very difficult to execute both of these transactions, online startups burnt a lot of cash doing reverse pick up and cash credit. I heard, that lot of cash they lost due to multiple reconciliation issues with different vendors, as their back end was not ready then.
3) Exchange your old product- Indians don't have a habit to just throw away used items at home. They need some resale value for junk too. So online company exploited this trait by bringing greed element of an exchange your junk for the new product. The future group has mastered this model and I think nobody will ever master that model except Mr. Biyani. You can sell your newspaper, without any friction at the hyper city in Malad some times and get shopping coupons.
My Story
Some days back i was made to order a new laptop in exchange for my old one. The occasion was my birthday.
The scheme said laptop had to be in good condition and I put all details of my older version as per the requirement. They threw Rs 4000 value for i3, 3rd generation, Original windows 10, Graphics card,5 yrs old, decent condition, with no damage to screen. I am putting 3 pictures of my old laptop to show the conditions( I think its really decent )
As I said earlier I was made to buy it, hence pushed the buy button and paid the money upfront.
Birthday Day
Guy came. I want to put across one fact as shared by the Wishmaster’ he was a replacement for some right guy’
I asked him to check the laptop so that I could delete everything from it except windows. Usually, each of us has multiple software and apps which contain usually high private things and they have multiple stuff in cache.
He said” Sir Pehle AAP delete kardo, then I will check ( First you delete everything you want, only then I will check’ “ surprisingly I again asked him. He repeated himself.
After I did clean all daily used applications like Quora, Antivirus, Outlook, acrobat, office, etc, This guy saw my laptop for one second ( and as put across earlier, he was a replacement) and told me there were marks on the screen. I told him that this machine was 5 yrs old and usually keyboard marks come on screen. ( I had put the pictures earlier)
He said, “ Sir, agar main galat piece le Gaya, wo meri salary se paisa kaat lenge (if i take wrong piece, company will deduct my salary as penalty)”.
He called somebody and said that “ screen kharab hai “ other guy said rejected. ( I think that's the normal reply if I tell somebody the same thing)
I asked this guy’ why did you tell me to delete the things when there was an iota of a chance of rejection’. He repeated the salary and penalty clause of Wishmaster.
My colleague told that laptop has protecting plastic screen and it can be removed. He said ‘ Ab to ye reject ho gaya’ ( Not its not possible as its rejected)
Real ordeal starts now
I registered my complaint with Flipkart explaining wrongful rejection and also a request to install my software as it was wrongfully deleted by Wishmaster.
The reply was ‘ We apologise for your inconvenience ‘ . They didn't even read the real issue.
I resubmitted the complaint.
The candid reply was ‘ We apologize for your inconvenience’.
This was the same response strategy which banking followed during the early 2000’s which was a decade of expansion. Slowly many of them have got rid of it after learning some hard lessons. You keep on replying same thing again and again and 80% of the complaints will just go away .
I raised a tweet
expectedly I got a call from the social media team, with Wishmaster in the conference. Wishmaster validated my side of the story in the conference call, after putting the wrong facts at first. But social media manager said ‘ i understand your problem, but we can't do anything’. I didn't get mail ID of customer care head, despite my regular requests for either concall with him or mail ID.
It took me 2 more complaints to just get an email id which they told me as customer care head’s ID. Seems customer care head is CEO
It's really hilarious, that nobody even bothered to send one more guy to check my laptop again.
Moreover, it took them 5 days to finally close my complaint suo-moto, which I never did. I had vocally put this thing on record while only 1 call.
Tame the customer
Throughout this transaction, I had been using the gift card.
Surprisingly after I got my refund, tried to use a gift card to different purposes. Unlike Amazon, you cant use your gift card balances to -
a) Pay your bills through PhonePe
b) Book flight tickets
c) Issue more gift cards
This is seriously a way to tame the customer and dont let him be free with the money. Its like’ I will not let you go until you empty your pocket’
Flipkart's media management first philosophy
Ecommerce’s basic premise is true stuff-sitting at home, supported with money-saving schemes.
Customer care is the most critical part of the transaction as there are multiple legs to it.
It had no-questions-asked customer care 6 months back.
But now, it has ‘ we understand your problem and we apologize for your inconvenience’ And also please dont raise on twitter.
I always had only one reason for shopping from Flipkart ‘ Indian startup with the equivalent product experience to amazon’
I now believe the ethos has gone after acqusition. Team has become complacent enough.
I have moved to amazon finally. One could write down a list of companies who lost market share who didn't listen to customers. PSU banks are best examples. NPA is not the basic problem of banks, its their ‘Customer Last’ philosophy.
I have deleted the app
