Problem with Naaptol

Objective :
I just wish to write about my recent poor experience with naaptol.

Background :
I wished to buy an exercise machine (a walker). I found it on Naaptol. I also know it as a heavily advertised site in Times Of India. I found out from 1 person that Naaptol had not treated him well.

What I did :
I still took a chance and disregarded the feedback as one-off, hoping that a site encouraged by ToI must be good. I placed the order on 7th Jan, 2011. It was showing the order status as "Payment received" on the website. I called them after placing the order to make sure everything was alright. The customer service rep. mentioned that the item will be with me in 7-10 business days.

Fun Starts :
I waited for 15 days & received nothing. I logged in to check the status : It was still showing the same old order status as "Payment received" on the website. This put me off a little. I called the customer care again.

Pathetic & non-responsive customer service :
When I called, a CS rep. again reiterated - "It will be there in 7-10 days" ;-) . To my surprise, he didn't care when I placed the order. It was already about 20 days after placing the order & this person still wants me to agree to their useless promise of 7-10 days ! I started getting some hints there itself. On this day, they somehow changed my order status to "Order verified" & then sat down it again for next 10-15 days :-) . I also sent a enuqiry / complaint email after my call to their customer care ID (ceo@naaptol.com), only to never receive any response. The mail content were -
"Hi, I've placed this order more than 20 days ago - 1216735 . It's still showing "order verified" ! What are you people doing ? It should have been at my house by now ! Pathetic service. Nobody has even called me or emailed to inform about the delay. What's the delay ? Please provide more information about my shipment immediately. I will not order anything from naaptol again."

Story continues :
After waiting for few more days, the status still remained at "order verified" , UNTIL I CALLED their customer care again ! I was understanding their trend of working here (learnings are never bad ;-) ) - till you call they sleep on it and don't care about any orders; only when we call, they wake up, change status to the next one & sleep again :-) ! Kind of fun, isn't it ? Ah ! One more thing, after 45 days passed, whenever I called customer care, the rep would say "the item is in your area already & should be delivered very soon". That "soon" HAPPENED after 20 days from 45th day :-) !

Pre-epilogue :
Tired of calling and talking to the foolish people who repeat the "7-10 days" line like a parrot, I called them to cancel & process a refund. I raised an official refund request & wrote to customer crae ID (CEO email) multiple times, without any response. They never called / emailed / explained their delay.

The fools finally end it :
Suddenly, on about 65th day from my order and after my official refund request (about 12-14th Apr, 2011), the box appeared at my doorstep & it was from Naaptol ! Now, I can understand the pain of the person whose review I read before ordering , but had ignored. The box had this product shabbily packed, without any documentation - no usage instructions at all. The box also wasn't of this product; PLUS the product also doesn't bear any company's name, no voltage specifications ! Anyway, the product at least works, otherwise I would have to talk to the pathetic people again to return it.

Conclusion :
Remember, the order arrived after I placed an offical refund request, 65 days after I placed the order. I have informed more than 60 friends about this heavily advertised and quite flashy website, which doesn't do what it promises to do. I'm never going to do any business with these people again and all of the people I informed are also doing the same. I hope they tell millions and nobody uses this website. Unless they care about customer's concerns, no business can survive for long.

Why I might just prefer to pay a small bribe than a bigger fine ?

We just wondered today, in the midst of so many scams being discovered everyday in India, we may prefer to just a pay a bribe to get our work done, to a common man, than pay a fee or a fine. Why ? When you pay a bribe, it will go to the common man's pocket & he'd do something for his family, however when you pay an official fine or a fee, which supposedly goes to the government, finally ends up in the pockets of corrupt politicians, who don't think twice pocketing the hard earned public money. When asked & proved guilty, they just resign (sometimes not ;-) ) & even the citizens forget the money the corrupt STOLE ! Cough up the money first you #$%@ - you HAVE to resign later cheater #$@%. No wonder why more than 50% Indian population is still poor & many without bare minimum facilities. Were the politicians honest, we wouldn't change the TV channel at the sight of one !
   'Rich getting richer' is an issue if there's black money involved, however I consider 'poor getting poorer' as a negative projection of the country's economic planning & currency routing. If money was channelled properly, India would have been the world's most developed nation in every aspect (not just IT workforce); villages would have ample electricity, water & food; roads would have been far better than any country; people would care for each other; our GDP would have been double or triple of what it's now (ever wonder why you don't care about another person on the road now ? ... because you are preoccupied, frustrated & have suffered enough at the hands of daily shocks given by every scam that takes a big chunk of your own country's hard earned taxpayers money). An astrologer had predicted India to become a superpower in all aspects in 21st century, however he must have had the earlier LEADERS in his mind :-)
   Do you wonder why we use the word 'POLITICIANS' now-a-days, not 'LEADERS' ? It's the subconscious paradigm of the general populace now that the ones THERE only play political games; who's there to LEAD ? I no more prefer to pay official fine if something can be done with a bribe. We no longer want to fill the houses of the ones whose clear intentions are to only STEAL. We don't want those thieves to exist. Long live democracy.
   I'd love to hear my readers' comments.