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This one is from Swiggy: This Sunday we decided to order Chinese from Mainland China and my wife put the items in the cart for a certain sum. To save time looking for the credit card and inserting the same, I decided to order the same from my phone. Incredibly, prices were 10% up for the same food items. I suggest everyone from now one to use two-three phones when buying from Swiggy to see which has the best price available, especially if you are ordering over Rs. 1000.

Purchased the item from woodentwist.com - a Rs. 500 wall-mountable rack for my (second) Wifi AP. Commensurate with the price, the item didn't look as if it is made from some durable wood. But meets my need and there is VfM.

Only gripe is that the item doesn't have anything - no clamps or hooks - to actually wall-mount it.

Fraud alert : Please beware of dealing with https://sudhantira.com/.
They will take your money and will not ship your products and make you follow up with them for a month and later claim they had shipped the products and courier company have already delivered it.

Ordered a Microwave oven stand in Meesho and ended up getting a defective product. I have been following up with Meesho for about a week now for the return. They are neither collecting the product back nor refunding back my money. Very poor service from Meesho. Did not expect this at all from them :thumbsdown.

And I get no help from the customer service agent. They keep saying they will collect the product and refund me back but the reality is very different.

Is your wife's phone an Android and yours a iPhone?

Because several people have reported that food ordering and ride hailing apps like Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, Ola, etc charge a higher rate when ordering from iPhone compared to an Android.

I think they assume that the iPhone guy must be richer on an average than the Android guy.

I had quoted an Instagram post about it on this thread.

Been hearing about this on family Whatsapp groups since the last week, but yet to experience this myself.

If true, this is a serious issue. Also, with the assumption that an iPhone owner is richer than an Android one, it cannot be across-the-board, since the owner of a Samsung Flagship these days can be termed equally rich or richer than his Apple counterpart. If e-commerce apps are actually differentiating consumers based on the devices they own, they are vitiating the field completely. :mad:

The same happens even across different Android phones (user account specific).

Also, on the same phone, have observed that if you check the offers before login and add it to your cart, post signing in the price offers as well as discount coupons will change.

They probably want unsuspecting customers to fall for their tricks. :)

The assumption is that an Android phone user would be more value-oriented than an Apple user who would be more brand oriented. In my limited purely personal observations, I find this assumption true.

This is normal customer profiling which every smart business or vendor (offline or online) does.

Agree on the theoretical aspect of the same. But isn't this practice drawing on broad strokes in general? Can spot many people from the lower-income strata or college freshers using iPhones too these days. The visuals from the recent iPhone launch of the people standing in queues outside the Apple Store are evidence itself.

Honestly feel that a user should not be differentiated against, purely on their choice of phones.

On a different tangent, have personally observed that even Uber/Ola pricing changes if you shut the app and restart again; but that is because the app considers this as increased demand for a ride on a particular route. :confused:

My wife has an Iphone 14 and I have a Realme GT2, so for us, Swiggy was displaying higher prices for an Android device.

I am not saying Apple phone users are richer than Android users (though that may also be true). What I am Android users, across income segments, would be more value conscious than typical Apple users.

To take an example from the auto sector, the thought process of a Skoda Kodiaq buyer and a BMW buyer would be different. Even if the Kodiaq buyer can afford a BMW, he/she would not go for it. That's what I mean by value consciousness. And it is across income segments.

Of course, I obviously can't prove all this with data :).

This is the online equivalent of what happens when you arrive at a shop without sticker prices, in a BMW vis-a-vis a Kodiaq :).

Irritating experience with The Souled Store.

They were hyping up their Black Friday Sale (Only one sale in a year) and was hoping to snag a few good deals. I had some 25 odd items in my wishlist for the family.

Day of the sale, opened up the site only to see my wishlist empty!

Sent them a feedback and got a reply stating that the sale rush crashed their systems and wishlist got reset for many customers.

Weird stuff.

Have been on the receiving end of Amazon's poor customer service & return policies these days. First I ordered 2 exhaust fans after consulting my builder about the size. Unfortunately, the size was told incorrectly by the apartment contractor and hence I received fans which couldn't be installed. Now, there is only option for exchange with the same product- no exchange with other size and certainly no refund. Still I am ok to a level as this was my fault. Stuck with products worth 2.5K without use.

Then ordered set of 2 led festoon bulbs for car's cabin light. Received just one. Created a pick up request clearly selecting the option that "missing items in the package". Guy turned up for return pick up but denied picking it up as product detail available to him showed 2 pieces of LEDs to be picked up (whereas I was returning one as it was all I received). I had to contact the customer care which is a task in itself these days to reach to them. Have gotten created a return pick up after 2 days again. Lets see what happens.

Next, in anticipation of return, I had placed order for another coin LED, which after ordering I realised that it is priced rather highly. Just after ordering, I went to the order's page to cancel the order. But there is no option to cancel the order- which is a surprise to me. This is within 5 minutes of ordering. Again reached out to the customer care to get my order cancelled. They say that they have escalated this to their seniors and order will be cancelled after 24 hours:Frustrati

What poor service level has Amazon now dropped to. Will certainly have to limit my purchases online as in case if any issue arises, then return, refund, replacement etc becomes too difficult and frustrating.

Getting counterfeit products from small sellers on Amazon is not new, but getting one from one of the largest sellers (Clicktech retail); that's new. I have lost my trust in the genuineness of products purchased online, planning to stick to physical shops for peace of mind.

Bought this yellow and cyan ink refills for my Canon ink tank printer from amazon. Both were from same seller - Clicktech retail. Yellow arrived first, everything was perfect and refilled the yellow ink. The next day cyan arrived. The paper packaging had a slightly different color and so was the Canon hologram , but I didn't pay much attention since I had trust in the seller. Up on opening the cardboard pack, I noticed differences in the nozzle and that is when I got the alarm bells ringing. Upon close comparison, I was able to notice quality issues between the two bottles. Luckily the product was returnable, so returned the item and got a refund.

I went through the product reviews and many users have already complained about getting duplicate cyan ink. Too bad that Amazon is taking no action against such counterfeit products. :Frustrati

The hologram on the right is original.



The entire product packaging was copied, so this is now way a compatible product like what some other sellers offering. The original packaging has a slight yellow tint on the paper.



Notice the difference in print quality.



Genuine canon inks come with caps which cannot be opened(left). The duplicate(right) had a removable cap and the quality of plastic was way cheaper.