Fraudsters. Review on Croma

Here's another story of India and it's shabby customer service and how companies think they can take customers for a ride.

I purchased a Croma Induction Cooker CRG0131 2000W on cromaretail.com. 2 days later I called the phone number listed on the website [18002583636]  to cancel the order I had placed.  As per their own cancellation policy written clearly on their website it says: "Cancel Order" can be placed anytime after booking of order but before status of order changes into "handed over to courier"

At the time of placing the call, the order was still showing as "ready to ship" on the cromaretail website and therefore I am eligible to a 100% cancellation. There is absolutely no ambiguity about this. The customer support executive who I was talking to claimed that the order has already been dispatched and refused to cancel my order. After I read out the above rule to him, he placed my call on hold and returned the same argument that the order is already dispatched. I once again reminded him about the rule as he kept repeating the same words like a machine after which he said he can cancel the order but after charging me 2% cancellation on the total amount. This 2% charge is ofcourse completely arbitrary, illegal and is nowhere mentioned on the website. He also asked me to contact Blue Dart and get the shipment stopped. What a joke.

On hearing this, I told him that 2% of the amount would be something like Rs. 50 which I do not care about but I will complain to the highest authorities to report this malpractice and I said I will give his name in the complaint. Hearing this, he got scared and allowed me to talk to the supervisor/floor manager  who listened to my complaint and promised to resolve the issue with 100% refund.

This is the way that cromaretail.com is cheating and fooling customers. If a customer is not informed about the rules they might just accept this 2% charge.

Please do not purchase anything from cromaretail. The reason for my cancellation in the first place was that I was getting a MUCH BETTER product from Philips [Philips HD4928] on flipkart for Rs. 2000 less than the price on cromaretail website.

I hope someone from Croma reads this and gets their act together.

P.S: the most blatant sign of fraud by the company is that if you try to write a review for any product on their website, it has to be "approved" by them before it is published. Do you really think they will allow negative reviews on their page?  In comparison a website like amazon.com you can write any kind of review whether positive or negative and it will be published.

Update: after 7 days of filing a complaint with the customer service, I have received a full refund into my bank account via netbanking.