Jul 21, 2013

Online Shopping Scams

Like everybody else, I shop for lot of things on the Internet. Mostly electronics, but I’ve also tried shopping for grocery lately. I recently came across an online shopping scam on the recently launched Amazon.in website by the world’s largest online retailer. Shocking? Then read on.

I recently purchased a mobile phone on the newly launched Amazon.in. Like everybody else, I carefully looked for the rating of the seller on Amazon and chose a seller who had a 5 star rating.

After having received the phone, I left a neutral (3 star) rating for the seller (I was not happy with their quality of service). Soon, I started receiving several unsolicited calls from the seller (LalajiOnline.com) requesting (nee, I should say coaxing) me to withdraw my neutral feedback. I did not comply.

A few days later, I went to Amazon.in to review my feedback and this is what I saw:

ShoppingScam

I discovered that the seller had removed my feedback without any action on my (the customer’s) part. Needless to say that I am shocked beyond words. How can the most reputed online retailer in the world allow a seller to tamper with customer feedback?

Since customer feedback is the only way for people to verify the credibility of a product and a seller, this kind of backdoor behavior by Amazon India makes this website extremely unsafe to shop. You can no longer trust the seller rating on this website.

As you would expect, LalajiOnline.com only leaves 5 star ratings intact and removes everything else. There is no reason to believe that other sellers are not doing the same. So beware of Amazon.in.

2 comments:

Abisurd said...

Did you file a complaint with Amazon?

Batty said...

Yes, I've filed a complaint. But the key issue is that Amazon is proactively helping its sellers (affiliates) fudge their customer ratings. And it looks like a feature (not a bug) to me.