Hi, your group seems to be doing some good work in the area of consumer
service. So far I have been able to fight my own battles without going
to court just by being tenacious and being after the service providers
and simply not letting them go till they provided satisfaction. Maybe it
was my good luck or maybe the organisations from CITIBANK to HSBC to
IDEA Cellular to ICICI Bank and ICICI LOMBARD insurance co are all
having some semblance of customer service and so do respond once we are
after them.

But the problem in India is that there are plenty of sellers who are
unscrupulous or plain inefficient and they know that our consumer
courts/ movements are not that strong and that we the people- the
consumers are not having that much energy to run after them. These 3
factors: (i) the huge number of unethical/ inefficient/ unscrupulous
sellers, (ii) lack of any proper consumer movement and publicity forums
and (iii) lack of energy and time on part of the consumers are allowing
these people to get away.

I came to your site and this looks a good group who promises to act and
help. I will keep coming back to observe the activities and help as I
can.

Today I had a question and comment about Indiaplaza.in online shopping
site. I find that this site is not able to delivery my gift item on time
as ordered. They are saying it is a vendor problem. I have paid online
and the status says "ready to ship" for the last 7 days. The matter is
to be delivered tomorrow and so I called them up on phone. They told me
that the vendor Surat Diamonds have a problem.. and it will be shipped
soon. That is all they say. I have interacted with INDIAPLAZA.IN for a
SURAT DIAMONDS PRODUCT.

So I have now asked them to cancel my order.

Questions:-

1. Can I do something if they refuse to cancel my order? On the site it
does say that I can cancel only till the item has not entered the
shipping process. The current status may be interpreted as being in the
shipping process. But this seems to be a one way rider and is not
customer friendly.. logically this may mean that if the status is such
for next one year then too it will be said to be in shipping process.

2. Does the service definition also includes the timely delivery? Or
does it allow them to escape? There is probably some fine print
somewhere (I have not read the terms and conditions as there is no use
since they are always one sided!) that even though they will try to
deliver as per dates chosen they cannot be held liable to delays.. This
is a typical line inserted by all sellers. What is your take on this?
What can the court say?

3. Can I also drag Surat Diamonds to the court if required? Can I get
any relief in this case if claimed?

In fact in this whole matter of delay or failure to delivery the item
tomorrow and not being able to promise a date (even though I am not at
all interested in the second option since a failure is a failure and so
a customer should have all the right to cancel and get refund of his
money if the delivery is not on time) what is your take?

Regards

S. Das