They Totally Fluffed Up My Order! (indiangiftsportal.com)

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	indiangiftsportal.com
Date:	04/01/07 (529 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: nice variety of gifts advertised on the site

Disadvantages: if only they kept their promise of delivery on time

My parents celebrated their ruby wedding anniversary a few weeks ago (mid December). They were in India on holiday at the time which was booked quite a while back so in anticipation (even though I’d arranged a party for them out there with catering and the like) I wanted some actual gifts to be delivered in time for their special day as well, so I went searching the net to find gift websites that were either based in India or could easily deliver to India, namely Calcutta, where my parents have a second home and spend up to 8 weeks of their time each year.

I came across indiangiftsportal.com in a Google search and had a look around to see if there were any reviews on the site. I found a pretty basic review on http://www.giftseeq.com/ who said “It offers a wide range of gift-options, most of which are exclusive Indian products, right on your desktop. On click of a mouse, you will discover it is just the kind of gift store you've always been looking for.”

I thought “Nothing ventured nothing gained” so decided to go for it. The site seemed to advertise a nice variety of gifts and flower bouquets and I must admit I was impressed by the range on offer as well as the very reasonable prices. It seemed that delivery to Calcutta would be no problem and free delivery was offered in about 117 cities in India.

NB: All prices quoted in this review are in US dollars.


THE LOOK OF THE SITE

I wouldn’t say the site is the best designed one I’ve ever come across. Firstly, one thing I like to see on any website is a “homepage”. This site doesn’t seem to have one, basically if you type in http://www.indiangiftsportal.com/ it will take you to what could be construed as a home page, with the site name in the top left hand corner - not taking up much space and not really standing out at all. Just below the site name “Indian Gifts Portal” you have the tagline “where shopping is a celebration of life”. Ok you might think that’s catchy, personally I thought it was rather corny and, no, I don’t think shopping is a celebration of life!

Secondly, I found the search facility within the site to be quite lacking - as an example I typed in “vanilla cake” and the so called vanilla cake it came up with was clearly a chocolate cake - it looked absolutely yummy but no way was I believing that it was vanilla! Oddly enough some of the gift selections were quite bizarre to say the least - under the cakes section you can order “mithai and cakes for mother” (mithai being Indian sweets) or “cakes/flowers for father” - I would have thought flowers would be more suitable for mother wouldn’t you?

To the right of the site name you can choose from: sign in, my account, calculate, view cart/check out, track order and help. Just below these options there are four different coloured tabs labelled: search gifts, birthday gifts, anniversary gifts and wedding gifts.

Just below the tagline you have an advert for the site about sending Christmas gifts around the world with free delivery within India including fresh flowers, Christmas cards and cakes and decorations. What’s wrong with that you say? Well I’ve just checked the site as I write this review and it’s the 27th of December. Christmas has passed as far as I’m aware, they don’t seem to be too hot on keeping the website up to date.

To the right of this advert is another one for New Years with graphics of party hats, balloons and a cute bunch of flowers saying you can get cakes, flower hampers, teddy bears and chocolates. Below the box itself you can select “Show pieces”, “teddy bears” or “Dry fruits”

Below the Christmas and New Year adverts, it says “Quick shop” from where you can choose from the following tabs: fresh flowers, chocolates, cakes, sweets, perfumes, apparel (clothing) and jewellery. To the right of this section there’s yet again a list of “gift ideas” to choose from: birthday gifts, anniversary gifts, wedding gifts, housewarming gifts and congratulations gifts. Just below this there’s a flashing advert about Express Delivery Gifts which can be delivered within 36 hours.

Also on the main page there’s Featured Products, which at the time of writing, was a pretty Glass and White Metal Lantern for $ 14.95 or a Door Hanging Ornament for $24.00. Next to Featured Products we have All Time Favourites which includes flower hampers, chocolate hampers, dry fruits and soft toys and a few others. We also have What’s New which today is a very lovely looking Beaded Handbag for just $13.50. Other sections on the main page include: arts and collectibles, designer and luxury, household, toys and games, and wooden and brass handicrafts.

At the bottom of the page we have Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club International images and the site is backed by “thawte” (secure site) with the option to “click to verify”. I didn’t feel worried about ordering from the site once I’d seen this bit at the bottom of the page. Actually, I’m not usually worried about ordering online, it’s proved far more secure over the years than I ever would have imagined.


THE PRODUCTS

I must admit I had a bit of a field day having a look around the site initially. There seemed to be just so much choice and at such amazingly reasonable prices I went a bit mad ordering stuff for my parents. Bearing in mind that I was placing this order 4 weeks in advance of my parents’ anniversary just to ensure there were no hiccups with delivery. All items I ordered were in stock and I was not advised otherwise at the time of ordering nor at any other time.

I found the perfect bouquet of flowers for my parents and placed it in my basket. I ordered the Bountiful Expression Fresh Flowers which were just $12.79 - this was 2 dozen gorgeous roses in a basket arrangement. Prices started at around $7.95 which was really cheap as far as I was concerned but I just really liked the ones I chose even though they were very cheap. The prices went up to about $25 - I don’t recall seeing anything more expensive than that. Having another look just now, the most expensive bouquet I can find is $22.32.

For birthday gifts you can choose from the following selection: Birthday Hampers, Flower Hampers, Jewellery, Portfolio Bags (?), Show Pieces, Teddy Bears, Wallets, Bouquet / Bunches, Flower Vases, Indian Perfumes, Photo Frames, Toys & Games,
Chocolates, Cakes, Sweets / Mithais (Indian sweets), Artificial Flowers, Shirt Hampers and Jewellery Boxes. I had no idea what portfolio bags were but having a quite look at this section found that they’re basically bags for office use or laptop cases; the cheapest was about $7 and most expensive was $195 - this was a Samsonite Laptop leather case.

If you’re wondering what I meant by show pieces above, basically they’re display ornaments such as an “elegantly crafted rectangular wooden serving tray accented by beautiful hand carvings” for just $11.50, a “classic ‘Hukka’ show piece handcrafted in transparent borosil glass” for $5.95, a “White Metal Pen Stand” for $6.95 or even a “attractive glass sculpture of beautiful heart” for just $5.95. I could go on more about these pretty gift items but I think I’d better move on to the next bit. There were gorgeous wooden and metal jewellery boxes starting at just $3.95 up to $40.00 - I seriously wanted to buy them all!

I could tantalise you with talk of the various Indian sweets available (if you like that sort of thing) starting at about $6 going up to $40, but I won’t. I was curious about what a “shirt hamper” might be, so off I went to have a browse - basically it’s what it says, you get a shirt and stuff like dried fruit and nuts with it or a leather wallet or chocolates! Prices for these range from $25.50 (Peter England shirt) to $77.30 for a Van Heusen shirt.

In the apparel and fashion section you can choose from designer suits (these are Indian suits which consist of a ladies tunic top and fairly loose or fitted trousers), sarees, shawls, skirts, stoles, men’s t-shirts, ladies kurtas (tunic tops), Should I go on? There’s also a home textiles section where you can buy bed linen, drapes & curtains, table cloths, cushion covers, etc.

In the toys and games section there seemed mostly to be cuddly toys, dolls, soft animals and the like but also lots of chess sets priced from $6 to $25. Not much of interest for me here so I moved onto the anniversary gifts section. Here, amongst the huge choice of gifts available, I found a handful of items I liked and wanted for my parents…


MY ORDER

Included in my order was: a mango shaped wooden tray, a beautifully embossed set of wooden tea coasters, a glass sculpture and a white metal photo frame. Shortly after putting in my credit card details, delivery information including date and message to be included with the gifts, I received an email confirming my order and delivery details. It all seemed simple enough. This was on 19th November. I had requested delivery for 13th December, the day before my parents’ anniversary (just to be on the safe side I allowed a day for delivery error - little was I to know I should have allowed for more time for error)!

On the 11th December I received a nice polite email advising that my order was being shipped as per my instructions provided, everything seemed in order, so I sent them a reply stressing that I hope the items would be delivered on time as it was part of my gift for my parents’ 40th anniversary. I received a very brief email which just read “Please be assured order shall reach as suggested” signed off by a “Pranav Sharma”. I was very pleased thus far with the company for keeping me informed about the order status.

I spoke to my parents on their anniversary and they said they received the bouquet of flowers the day before, which had been left with the next door neighbour, as they had been out at the time of delivery. No sign of the other items. I emailed indiangiftsportal.com asking what had gone wrong ESPECIALLY after I had stressed that it was important the items were delivered on time - three hours later I got a brief email saying “We just enquired. Delivery was attempted but premises were closed. Please be assured we shall attempt the delivery again and shall deliver ASAP”, there was no hint of an apology in the email.

I was able to track the order and dropped a query to the delivery courier who replied saying “Dear Sir , Thank you for writing into us, Please be informed that said shipment is undelivered due to residence closed . We shall re-attempt delivery tomorrow.” Tomorrow was Saturday, I knew my parents would definitely be home all day as they were having their party and the house would be occupied at all times during the day and night.

Saturday came and went - nothing arrived - to cut a long story short the items were delivered on Tuesday. I was pretty upset that these gorgeous gifts I took hours to select 4 weeks in advance had turned up 6 days late. When one is expecting a delivery which doesn’t fit through the letterbox, the least one expects is for the delivery company to leave a calling card to say delivery was attempted. My parents have a letterbox which they checked thoroughly, no card had been left at any time to say that anyone had attempted delivery either on the Wednesday when they should have arrived or three days later on the Saturday.

Needless to say I shan’t be ordering from this shoddy company again and to add insult to injury they’re sending me junk emails on a weekly basis trying to entice me to place another order. I have actually replied none too politely telling them to remove me from their mailing list!


TO SUMMARISE

Overall, I’d rate the selection of gifts available on the site as 8 out of 10, the ease of placing the actual order online 8 out of 10, delivery rating would have to be 1 out of 10 for completely cocking that one up for me and customer service gets a 2 out of 10 - 2 for actually bothering to reply to me, they totally lose points here for not actually offering an apology in any of their correspondence with me and for not even getting the delivery date right the 2nd time around, i.e. when they didn’t deliver on the Wednesday and said they would deliver on Saturday, why then did the items not arrive till Tuesday?

Overall the site gets 3 out of 10 from me. If I’m ordering something specifically as a gift and I order it well enough in advance I expect to have the items delivered on time or at least be advised straight away if there’s a problem and this company certainly didn’t fulfil that part of the deal for me.

Summary: Some excellent gifts available but what's the point if they can't deliver on time?