Friday, October 4, 2013

Jabong.com Shopping Experience Review

Jabong.com Shopping Experience Review

I tried shopping with Jabong.com a year ago and my attempt ended in a funny to and fro with their customer support (read HERE). Still I kept reading positive reviews about Jabong from bloggers who keep receiving free gift vouchers from them to share their wonderful shopping experience. All those positive reviews somehow kept Jabong in my good books and I was hopeful may be one day I will also shop with them.
Jabong.com Shopping Experience Review
Last month I saw a 30% discount coupon on Jabong.com, applicable on a shopping of Rs 1499 and above. There were some items out of stock on Flipkart, so I decided to get them from Jabong and avail the discount to save some good bucks. If you live in Delhi or Gurgaon, you can skip reading further because you will be all gaga over this online store and their super quick delivery and what not. For those in other parts of India, here's the true picture.

On Sept 21 late night (rather Sept 22, sunday early morning) I placed one order with Flipkart.com and another with Jabong.com. To my pleasant surprise, both Flipkart and Jabong shipped one of the ordered items that same Sunday morning. But I also received an email from Jabong telling me the expected dispatch date for each item, which showed expected date of order completion as Oct 4, 2013 (2 weeks!). While flipkart delivered my entire order within 4-5 days (I live in a remote area), I received the final item from my Jabong order last night, over a span of 13 days, my slowest ever online shopping experience!
Jabong Shopping Experience Review
Anyways, their email had mentally prepared me for the slow delivery but what I was not prepared for was their utterly disgusting unsafe packing. The beautiful pair of earrings I had ordered arrived in a dirty polythene bag with fragile written on it, if only Jabong could understand how highly literate and considerate the courier guys in India are.


Jabong poor online shopping experience


Jabong.com Shopping Experience Review
They sent those useless 10 and 20% off coupons with *Conditions Applied
Jabong could not even afford a small cardboard box for my earrings and delivered them damaged. It killed the whole charm, making me anxious about the remaining items.

Jabong.com Shopping Experience Review

With a lot of care, I could push the earring pins back into position, but I was very scared so as not to break them. The rivets/holders are very loose.

After a few days arrived the courier guy dangling two more plastic bags with my ordered products hanging in one side. One was ylang ylang essential oil with the crushed distorted cardboard box but thankfully it was intact. They did not even seal the mouth of the cardboard box with cellotape. 

However, this set of 3 essential oils in the other packet was the worst.



Jabong.com Shopping Experience Review
Can you see the broken seals?
I was looking for sandalwood essential oil for my mom for a long time for her treatment and it is not sold on the Soulflower website. So when I saw this mini set of 3 essential oils, one being Sandalwood, I immediately added to the cart (Price INR 350, after discount: INR 245). The oil had leaked making all the 3 bottles sticky. The seal for sandalwood oil was broken and not only that, the nozzle was already punctured. I can imagine the seal to break during transit but the nozzle cannot rupture on its own due to courier mishandling. Where's the quality check Jabong? 

Moreover, the oils do not smell or FEEL like essential oils. When I opened the pack, the whole room smelt of incense sticks due to mixed aromas and essential oils burn on the skin but all three of these felt neutral. I don't know whether to blame Soulflower or Jabong for the quality. A very bad product indeed! INR 245 went down the drain.

The last and the most precious item got delivered last night but not without the scars of poor packing and poor handling :( After my several conversations with their customer service, I just don't have the energy to follow up and go through the hassle of return shipping. They used to have a toll free number but now it is a paid one.

So here's the gist of my Jabong.com shopping experience:
  1. Split shipping of order with a LONGGGGGGG span of delivery time.
  2. Poor courier partners. I wasn't able to track ANY of my items despite having a tracking code. Jabong delivers within 24 hours in Delhi NCR, If Flipkart can have it's own service even in remote areas, why can't Jabong?
  3. Worst packing I have ever seen with any online shopping portal. No concern for customer's money or emotions behind the ordered items.
  4. Damaged items due to poor packing.
  5. Zero quality check. I received open and used items.
  6. Delivery confirmation SMS after a week of actual delivery.
If you live in Delhi NCR or a metro, feel free to order from them but if you are in any other city, order at your own risk. I am done with them. If I have to sum up my shopping experience with Jabong.com in one line, it would be the famous hindi saying "Unchi Dukaan Pheeka Pakwan".

UPDATE: Team Jabong contacted me today and took a detailed feedback. They are surprised about the packing issue as they feel their packing is quite sturdy always and that they don't know how come my stuff was sent like that. They offered me a Rs 500 coupon as a compensation but I simply asked for a refund of Rs 245 for the soulflower set of 3 oils. I am pleasantly surprised that instead of refunding the money on my credit card, they preferred to take my bank details and immediately initiated an NEFT transfer for INR 245.

That indeed is the silver lining to this shopping experience. But I have no plans to shop with them again in the future.

25 comments:

  1. Oh gosh I have always had a great shopping experience with Jabong.. though the first tie i was given a shopping voucher worth a tiny amount but I hv ordered from the several times and parcel has always reached safely bubble wrapped...sad to hear abt ur sour experience..

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    1. Yes I remember Jasmine, you also had a Jabong giveaway on your blog on your bday last year. My point is they cater very well to Delhi and NCR, but if they have no inclination to serve the other cities properly, why sell outside Delhi then? My earrings were bubble wrapped but that alone didn't help because of no cardboard packing.

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    2. I never had a jabong giveaway on my blog..anyhow..I guess Jabong needs to seriously work on its warehouses outside the metro cities..

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    3. ah ohk..just read ur comment below..so they just have 1 warehouse..hmm

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  2. I have shopped from the a couple of times both paid and unpaid and delivery was within 2 days and same goes for myntra too. I don't know but I have this feeling that there is something wrong with there warehouse in your city as here in Delhi, I have got products within 24 hours which I paid for which even you know. May be they need to improve their services there.
    I love flipkart, today only received one more parcel and both my cameras and phones were from them only!

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    1. Yes Niesha, since they are based in Gurgaon, they give exceptional service in Delhi NCR but outside of that they suck. There is no warehouse problem as all items are shipped from Gurgaon only. Flipkart has it's own courier service in Jalandhar and I was surprised that the Flipkart guy came all the way from 2 cities away to deliver to my place daily for 4 days in a row.

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  3. Awesome review Gagan dear I love Jabong <3

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    1. Thanks for the nonsense comment as always. I don't love them ;)

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    2. Dear gaganpreet I was planning to order from them bt not now. It could b just ur exp n probably not going to happen with me. But since I too live in remote place NABHA I don't want to take any risk as every penny I spend is very valuable to me, hard earned money! More over I value ur judgement. My order from browsers n soulflower were excellent.

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    3. Dear Yavika/Kalyani, I respect your views. It is our hard earned money and therefore businesses should understand that feeling when we spend with them. If they are capable of giving exceptional service in major cities, they can give at least some % of that in non-major cities.

      Actually the problem is both with courier handling as well as poor packing. If they had packed properly, items wouldn't have gotten damaged even with improper handling by courier. I doubt Jabong would have it's own courier service in Nabha though they have till Ludhiana and Jalandhar and cover only the main cities. They even provide a try and buy option in major cities. Soulflower's packing is quite sturdy I agree though I haven't had a chance to shop with browsecart. I will never buy from Jabong again.

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  4. Dear Sunshine Diva,

    We are really sorry about your experience. We would request you to please share your order number so that we can take the necessary corrective action.

    Regards
    Team Jabong

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    1. Dear Team Jabong. Thanks for reaching out. I have shared the order details in a comment on your Facebook page as there was no message button there. Regards.

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  5. OMG .... another victim to shi**y online shopping sites. Although I didn't really get the last Hindi sentence, I'm so sorry for your bad experience. Such sites are spread everywhere in the world & they don't have any respect for a person's feelings or money.

    I'm also very thankful that you shared such experience with us. I don't live in India but, who knows, I might visit there sometime, so it's good to know such a thing.
    Keep on with the good subjects & wish you better luck for your next shopping experience :)

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    1. Thanks sweetie. The last line means a business which has large fame and you try it out only because of it's big name to be later disappointed by it's poor product/service. My unhappiness lies in their poor quality check and poor packing. The service is inconsistent. We all pay for the products but they are giving phenomenal service to some and totally sh*tty to others.

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  6. hey gagan,my experience is actually the exact opposite...,i just received my order from flipkart day before yesterday after 2 weeks and repeated emails and phone calls to their customer service...earlier my brother had to go to the first flight courier office and rummage through the different parcels they had yet to deliver to collect the very expensive harddisk he ordered a month back....i think the problem is with their courier partner...welll with jabong .,i always recieved the order within three days...its probably because of the area we live in .,u live in extreme north and me in extreme south:)):))

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    1. Hello Ruku!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So happy to see your comment. I thought you would have flown away by now and I would have written to you in this week. So are you able to access my blog from China?

      You mentioned first flight... yes, actually Jabong delivered my order through first flight and it seems first flight has equally poor service in your area too... which is the common link between my Jabong order and your flipkart one.

      Of course first flight does take 5-7 days to deliver from the dispatch date. So I am not unhappy with that as I knew what date each item was to be shipped on. But if Jabong had packed the items properly or checked before shipping, my products wouldn't have been in such sad condition. Flipkart's packing was the best I have ever seen on any online store. (Hmmm so I see that Jabong has it's own courier service in your area and Flipkart has it's own service available in my area which is why we have opposite experiences with them.)

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  7. Hi Gagan..:)
    It is so ridiculous on their part to have such a huge online shopping site and making so many claims and after that giving such an awe-full service!:(( I was so much into online shopping as it saves time and money too but lately I've been also having bad experiences.. I trusted flipkart in these matters but they're in the same league too.. I had ordered birthday gift for my father sometime in the end of August which was to reach me by 5th Sept.. And wud u believe on 10th of Sept they messaged that becoz of some reason, they are redelivering the order!! I mean what were they doing since the day I had ordered from them!! I too cant trust any of these sites anymore.. And even I agree that most of the times, jabong coupons are useless!:D

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    1. Yes Carolina even I have heard mixed reviews for Flipkart but the reason could be Flipkart has it's own retail service as well as allows other vendors to sell through them just like snapdeal does. So if you chose a product from some other vendor other than WS Retail (Flipkart retail), it is bound to take time as it depends on the vendor when they procure and ship and Flipkart doesn't play any role there. And I agree there aren't many good online stores out there, I too have had my share of challenges and with couriers too.

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  8. This is Sad!

    Although I Have Shopped From Jabong Only Once and Didn't Face Any Problems But Some Friends Of Mine Had a Tough Time When Their Order Was Delivered To Them..

    Honestly, It's Been so Long That I Have Shopped Online.. My Previous 2 International Experiences have Been Pretty Bad Which Has Kinda Discouraged Me To Shop Online More

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    1. Sorry I just noticed I had not replied to this one Henna. You understand how difficult it is to locate comments in the blogger interface :)

      I have shopped internationally only from buyincoins.com and those too were half good half bad coz split shipping and all.... things don't reach you. I have heard many people receiving damaged cosmetics and make up items from international sites plus the shipping charges are so high, I never ventured into that just to buy makeup. All my other attempts to shop internationally have failed coz it never reached me.

      You are lucky if you can go and touch and feel things and then buy. It has a thrill of its own. But I am in a remote area so I don't get everything locally :)

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  9. Omg this is horrible. I wonder how could they sent products with broken seals. Have purchased once from their site n i agree they do take a lot of time!

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    1. It is evident their quality check is poor. Even the earrings i had bought, the ones you see in the pics above, fell down and most of the stones came off :( And those were not even stones but plastic pieces cut into diamond look. There are much better alternatives in the market, thankfully I don't need jabong.

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  10. I agree with u on this. I have done online shopping onli twce and both times with jabong.. my handbag worth rs 2500 only aftr 2 or 3 times I used it the material strted peeling off.. I was so annoyed.. I discared it within 6 mnths of my purchase. :( then I bought a pair of reebok shoes and even they are now tearing already. (its not even a month I have bought those).

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    1. OMG, a handbag worth Rs 2500 lasted only 2-3 uses!!! I know about yebhi,com buying old stuff dirt cheap and selling it off as fresh but never thought Jabong would be doing that too. You know sometimes they buy stuff from Mumbai and in ulhasnagar and mumbai you get the duplicate of every brand. I am not sure if these guys are even able to make out the difference coz on ebay too, a lot of duplicate stuff is sold as branded especially perfumes and watches. But if you spent so much, you didn't deserve that. Did you give them feedback? And sports shoes last ages. I had bought a pair 4-5 years ago and it is still like new. I am sure there is something wrong. I am very wary of buying apparel online even though I do get very tempted at times.

      You know Farida, even the earrings you see above, one fell and the stones came off. I was shocked to see that those were plastics and not real stones but my purchase was far smaller than yours. Don't let them go, at least your shoes were bought recently. Get after them for a refund.

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