I wrote to them, they said to the effect that my email ID has been disabled. I am unable to get satisfactory answer from them, only evasive answers.
This is what actually happened. During Jan - Feb 2016, the MI 4 phones were on instant sale, and there was lot of demand, and I placed for two phones, paid by credit card. The credit card payment went through from the bank but failed at the Flipkart side, very unusual situation. So, I had to cancel the order as I did not get any satisfactory follow up on this issue from Flipkart as they simply said that I have to follow with the bank.
Since I badly needed those phones, as they were really good deal, this time I placed an order again with cash on delivery, got the phones on cash on delivery.
In the mean time, I did follow up with the Flipkart to ensure proper refund on the failed payment. Since this was an unusual technical problem, nobody really owned it, giving only evasive answers, I did escalate it multiple levels as I was not getting ownership to own this problem and resolve it.
In the mean time, I called the bank people and asked them to withold the payment to protect my interests. I continued to escalate with Flipkart for resolution, but they had no grip on the issue, and I was not relenting on it.
I really do not know what actually happened, either the back office resolved the issue with the bank, or the bank people forced the refund, I will not know as the Flipkart never put me in the loop as to what really happened and how the fix was done. They only argued that everything is looking fine and there is no issue. Basically, they were hiding the technical glitch, otherwise, probably that will cause some of them to answer to too many people.
I left the issue at that as my payment issue was resolved after a week or so, it was ok if I din't know how exactly.
After an year or so, when I attempted to make another purchase, I was getting an error message that order can not be placed. When I followed up with the service, I learned that my email ID is disabled in a database level, but that aspect is hidden.
What probably might have happened is that because I escalated the problem too many times and was relentless on resolution, some bigwig was getting negative exposure, and decided to screw me with a revenge, silently disabling my Id from further purchase.
When I asked as to what is the valid reason for this disablement, I was given the reason of cancelling an order, which in itself can not be the reason and that cancellation was due to their shortcoming and not mine, and further follow up and escalation on this even to the CEO level resulted in no amicable resolution. Even I posted this issue publicly on Twitter, even then I did not get the resolution.
I tried to complain to the Consumer Care section of the government agency, the website refused to take my complaint sighting the reason that my complaint is too short in volume of words. I could then make out that there is a probable nexus between the government agency and these bigwigs towards minimizing formal complaints. I decide to let it go, and did not follow up further.
I accepted the fact that Flipkart does not want me as a customer, its business practices are hoax compared to global standards and its customer service is an eye wash. I have been very happy with the Amazon relation, so I did not miss anything much. The only regret I had was that I missed to support an Indian company against a foreign company, but I let that too go because Flipkart was adamant not to reform. The culture of babugiri was very much in its bureaucracy, and that would not change in near future.
So, my aim now became to resist the arrogance of business people, the one prevalent was business people from the north forcing hindi on southern people, because they are considered meek. So, I started refusing to take any tele call from that point onwards, if it started in Hindi. I initially insisted to talk in English or Kannada, but some of them simply ignored the request and continued in Hindi. I started cutting the call on the very first Hindi word hence forth and blocking that number in the phone.
After blocking almost 50 numbers or so in my phone over the three months, the telecalls have gone down, now I need to block 1-3 numbers per month. I feel good about this. An ad agency attempts to call me over approx. twenty different numbers before giving up on it.
In the mean time, if there is any real deal on Flipkart, I can still use the ID of other folks at home, but that need is more of an exception than rule, so I am not missing much.
Now I am curious as to how the internal bureaucracy reforms will occur with the pending Walmart tie up. I will escalate the issue again post Walmart involvement and check whether the Walmart marriage brought any reform for the arrogant outlook of an Indian company, but I am not ready to bet on this reform yet!
Best Regards
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