Before I begin to tell my story, let me say that I have been a loyal customer of Indiaplaza for more than 6 years and this is the first time I ever had to contact their customer service and the experience is indescribable.

I had purchased a Sony Ericcson W300i phone for my brother as a Birthday Gift for about Rs. 5600 in Feb. 2008 from Indiaplaza.in, however, last month the microphone of the telephone ceased to function making the phone unusable. We contacted SONY INDIA but they said that SONY does NOT provide any kind of warranty for its products that are SOLD ONLINE. This was discovered after my brother had to waste one full day of work to visit SONY's service center in Mumbai and had to wait in a long queue just to discover this. Needless to say, this was a shocking experience as Indiaplaza's product description clearly mentioned that the product came with ONE YEAR OF MANUFACTURER WARRANTY.

We conveyed this to Indiaplaza hoping to get a clarification on how they were selling something with a warranty that was not even being recognized by SONY INDIA. Instead of telling the entire sob-story, I would like to say that I have made almost 10 Phone calls to Indiaplaza's customer care located in Bangalore to no avail. I have no clue what kind of people they have employed.

Their customer care reps have FAILED to even understand the issue after about 10 phone calls from me and about 7-8 from my brother. The service reps keep offering to send a receipt or a warranty card despite out repeated requests that SONY INDIA has already refused to honor WARRANTY regardless of anything. The rep we spoke to whose name I will not mention, has repeatedly PROMISED that a supervisor will call my brother back in Mumbai with a resolution, however, after false promises for about a week, NO ONE has yes returned the phone call and we have to call them each day about why NO ONE is contacting us.

Let me make it clear that I have to wake up at 5 AM (which i do anyhow) in order to make the call to them before they shut down operations at 6 PM IST.

Despite several emails, we keep receiving a poorly composed reply with promises that they are looking into the issue. I am really appalled at the whole issue and despite emailing a bunch of other people including their COO, Vaitheeswaran, I have not received any thing promising. Indiaplaza has constantly refused to hear our please to either replace the phone or repair it.

I have sent them a final email advising that a case will be filed in Consumer Court for breach of trust and dishonoring the terms of purchase. I am hoping to receive good news before I am forced to take this extreme step.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Stay Miles Away from INDIAPLAZA. Their Management and Customer Care both are HIGHLY INCOMPETENT and need to take a lesson from companies like Infibeam.com and Flipkart.com where customer services exceeds all known benchmarks. I have attached a copy of my conversation with Indiaplaza as well.

Regards,
Gautam