Groceries (5 Stars) and Laptop exchange ( -1 star). Review on Flipkart

This first part of the review is very specific to Flipkart Groceries only. Flipkart Groceries has been the first choice for sourcing more than 80% of my groceries for my home.

Pros:

1. Superb quality and value for money for 95% of the products that I have sourced for my family.

2. Flipkart started off 10 minutes delivery service for generic groceries trying to compete with Instamart(Swiggy) and Blinkit(Zomato) and others.

3. Generally the prices are lesser in comparison to the same products available at the local groceries stores. Even after taking into account the taxes and delivery charges. Especially when you order during sales offer / festival related discount sales.

4. Get to know the product and other alternatives available before placing the order.

5. Get to order some unique products that are just not available in your local grocery stores or priced exorbitantly by the local vendor.

6. Superb payment integration with most of the banks. I have never faced any challenges in this regards.

7. The Flipkart shopping points that you get is reasonable and adds to the points one get while making payments through credit card.

8. You get a choice to take delivery on specific date and time-period(early morning 6AM to noon and noon to night 11 PM) provided you get the free slot(mostly you get it by next day except for specific days like before weekends, holidays and festivals).

Cons:

1. Crazy and unpredictable delivery times. You just can't predict when the delivery can happen as they declare 6 AM to 2 PM and 2 PM to 11 PM. I have faced a situation of taking delivery at 6.30 AM as well as 10.50 PM. I really wish Flipkart reduces this window-time to 1 to 2 hours slots.

2. No guarantee that you will get products in 'undamaged' conditions - especially products like eggs, cooking oil in sachets, etc. - fortunately, Flipkart has enabled to return back those damaged products. Reason for listing here is for the time value lost in the process.

#End of Part-1#

This part of the review is very specific to Laptop exchange offer:

On 22-Feb2025, I placed an order for Samsung Book4 laptop with an exchange offer for my existing Acer Aspire7 laptop. The total price payable was super value for money. Hence, proceeded with the purchase. The Seller was named " RetailNet". Delivery date was 28th Feb2025 by 11 PM. On 28th Feb - I cleaned up my existing laptop and got it ready for the exchange(backed up and deleted all my data and performed a reset). The ordeal started as the delivery did not materialize for 6 days and each day I get a message that the laptop will be delivered and by EOD there is no-show. I started to wonder if I have become a victim of some scam! Reached out to FlipKart support team and escalated. Next day, the laptop exchange person landed at my home. He started to download some diagnostic software from a portal that had a name "Tantra". My laptop rejected his attempt to load the software. He had no clue on how to troubleshoot and was repeatedly calling some tech support person who was of no help as the situation never resolved. After an hour the delivery person promised to come first thing tomorrow morning and never showed up after that and disconnected all my calls to check the status. Upon calling Flipkart customer support for cancelation- they promised resolution within 48 hours! No show till 8thMarch. Frustrated, I wanted to cancel the order and forced for escalation as I am neither getting the product nor able to cancel through their portal. Cancelation can be done when the delivery person comes to your place and this moron is no where to come and never took my calls. Meantime, thanks to the idiot's diagnostic that infected my laptop with Trojan Virus. I had to reset the laptop again and restore my data and continue to work. Finally, after escalation, got the sms that order has been cancelled on 9th Mar and received my payment made on 11th March2025.

This was a WORST experience I had with an online service provider in my entire online shopping experience.

Lesson learnt:

1. Check the seller review before placing the order. If it is from "RetailNet" - AVOID buying.

2. Never handover your laptop without backing it up! Mercifully I escaped from a horrific situation as I had my backup intact.

3. Make sure that the person who has come to do the exchange explains to you what he is loading into your laptop.

4. Better to avoid the$%^& scam of laptop exchange offers and buy with direct cash discounts.

Summary: Flipkart has been an integral part of my house-hold purchases and I am happy to continue to be its customer. However, I will make sure that I will never ever place an order if it was sold by "RetailNet"