The report "Online retailers: Amazon versus Flipkart versus eBay" (June 17) focuses only on the online price differential. For a retiree who does a fair amount of online shopping (because it saves me the hassles of traffic and parking, besides time and petrol cost), I can say a small price differential is not the deciding factor - it's the overall shopping experience from any online retailer. And so I find that consistent service levels and responsiveness offered by the likes of Flipkart (WS Retail) and Myntra, which mainly sell their own goods, cannot be matched by retailers that follow a marketplace model. In the case of a marketplace model, the customer has to deal with a new entity each time, and has to be cautious with the fine print of each different "seller", whereas in the case of an inventory-based retailer, each satisfactory experience fortifies customer confidence since the retailer's delivery logistics and customer care remain the same. In fact, I stopped buying at eBay when one of its sellers dispatched the purchased good through a cheap courier service after promising "Blue Dart/First Flight" in the eBay listing. The item took 12 days to reach. When I took up the issue, I found the seller arrogant and eBay indifferent. Therefore, till such time the marketplace online retailers implement a strict code of discipline for the participating sellers, people like me will go for online retailers with their own inventory, who are in a better position to own up and resolve customer issues directly and promptly. Incidentally, the wide price range mentioned in the report for the movie Life of Pi wrongly suggests the prices for different formats, viz, VCD (cheapest), DVD and Blu-ray (costliest), under the same head.
M C Dwivedi Lucknow
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