Pepperfry Fiasco

Earlier this year a brand new ecommerce store made splashing headlines fresh with a big funding and claiming unimaginable signups. Soon people started dishing out this venture with it's unscalable tactic of acquiring customers. This business was pepperfry. Last week after getting spammed every week with crazy discounts I decided to test how much water it could hold.

I had a fresh newsletter from Pepperfry offering me a Rs. 501/- Discount on anything purchased above Rs. 1000/-. Fare enough if you are willing to pass on some hard earned (or rather a wind fall) money of yours my way, you cannot blame me for taking the bait. So promptly I order a 1200/- Jewelry for my wife and mentioned the coupon code at the time of checkout. So finally a 2000/- something stuff with 50% discount and a Rs. 500/- coupon costed me approx Rs. 600/-. 5 Days to deliver is what the checkout page said.

Yes Flipkart has spolied me with a 24 hour delivery but what the hell, I was getting a Rs. 2000/- stuff for Rs. 600/-. The least I could do was wait. Right? So I waited. 5 days over and not news. 7 days over and now I am feeling a little jittery. Was there something in fine print which I missed which would allow them to have my hard earned money the easy way rather than the other way around?

I fire-up couple of emails, and login couple of support request on their website. 10 days later I see my money credited back to my account (thank god), My order status on the order page shows "Canceled", and all my support tickets closed with no explanation.

Now my question to Pepperfry. Seriously guys what the hell are you upto? Are you just trying to acquire more signups by promising ridiculous coupons and then not delivering stuff? Do you expect any repeat purchase to happen on your site with this kind of behavior? Aren't you setting a wrong precedent and reducing the trust that people are starting to build up about buying stuff online?

Anyone else had a similar experience with Pepperfry?