Yet another online store I have shopped from for makeup. To
tell you the truth, online stores have lost their charm for me. You just can’t
rely on them to be completely honest. They show you all the products and after
you place an order and pay the money, they mail you saying that the product is
not in stock—that’s purplle.com for you. They sell shamelessly sell old
products to you, aka in.loccitane.com.
And then, the late delivery of products, brought to you by www.majorbrands.in.
By now, your probably like, “what possessed you to shop
again, girl?” Well, like they say, desperate times, desperate measures. I
don’t get access to make up brands except Lotus and Lakme in the area where my
college hostel(my home for 9 months a year) is, and international brands tend to release new stuff when I’m not
at my home, aka Mumbai.
This fall, Maybelline released new products every month,
like the Bold Matte lipsticks, the Cheeky Glow blush and of course—The ColorShow Nail Enamels. When the Color Show enamels released, what was I supposed to
do? Just sit and bide my time till I got a chance to come home? Hell, no. I had
to get my hands on them asap. I was surprised to see them available online
within a week of their launch, at Nykaa. So I happily placed my order, along
with a few other items so that I could get a bill of above Rs. 500 to avail
free shipping.
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screenshot of the home page
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A little bit about Nykaa: (taken from their site)
Who are we?
Promoted by FSN E-Commerce Ventures Pvt Ltd. and spearheaded by Ms. Falguni
Nayar, the former Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, India's
leading investment bank, along with a team of experienced professionals.
Nykaa.com is committed to bring to you the best and the biggest brands, an
incredible shopping experience and excellent customer service. Our wide selection
of brands and comprehensive advice will delight you day after day.
What does Nykaa offer?
Nykaa is a beauty and wellness e-commerce platform with a difference.
•An extensive selection of curated products and services
•100 % genuine, fresh products
•Comprehensive content including product reviews, beauty tutorials, articles by
experts and an e-beauty magazine
•A beauty helpline to assist you in choosing products and services best suited
to your needs to ensure sustainable beauty for all time to come.
Coming back to my experience…
Nykaa clearly
mentions on their site that they use 3 courier services- Bluedart, DTDC and
Aramex. I’ve had a good experience with DTDC, but not with Aramex, and you can read about it here. Also, Aramex customer service agents are rude, they never
greet you with a Good Morning/evening/afternoon and don’t even address you by
“mam”. But coming back to Nykaa, given my bad experience with Aramex, I called
up the Nykaa customer care and specifically requested that my items should be
shipped through DTDC only and not through Aramex under any circumstances. The
customer care executive(CCE) assured me that they will be shipped only by DTDC
and made a note of the request along with my order. I even called them the next
day to confirm all this again.
After 3 days from placing the order, I received three emails
from Nykaa regarding shipment of the items. Yes, I kid you not, they took three
days to ship the items. It was a Sunday that day, I opened the emails and saw
that my items were being shipped in 3 lots and 2 lots were through Aramex. I
was appalled; even after I’d gone to the
pain of calling them up and making it clear that I don’t want my items to be
shipped through Aramex, they did that anyway. I immediately dialled for customer
service but unfortunately customer services has a holiday on Sunday.
The next day I called them up, and expressed my anguish and
disappointment. The CCE lady assured me that everything will go smoothly, and
blah, blah, blah. What could I do? The items were all shipped and there was no
way to get them to backtrack and change the courier services. So I just waited
for them to reach me.
The first delivery:
The item shipped through DTDC arrived first. It came to me on
the 5th day from placing the order. I received the other items
through Aramex on the 7th day from placing the order, typical Aramex
speed.
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| NYX Single Eye shadow ES32 |
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| The invoice |
The item I got through DTDC was nicely bubble wrapped, they actually
wasted a lot of bubble wrap and paper for one tiny eye shadow box.
The second delivery:
The items from Aramex were not packed well. Aramex
shipped the two nail polishes and a nail filer and only one of the nail
polishes were bubble wrapped.
And did you notice the nail file is too big for
the box it came in, how did they fit it in? It just popped out the second I
opened the box.
Summing up my experience:
I’m not happy with the service and I definitely won’t
consider shopping again if I’m at college. When I’m in Mumbai, if the need
arises I probably will try it again because Mumbai is a place in which I’ve
always had good online shopping experience. Also, I’m not happy with the time
they took to ship and deliver the products; it can definitely be made faster.
The customer service is polite and attentive. Because of my experience I can
say that there is a communication gap between the CCEs and those who are
incharge of packing and shipping the orders and that should be bridged.
Overall Verdict- 2.5/5
Update: I have placed orders with them when I was in Mumbai and it always took 2-3 days for the parcel to reach me, which is pretty good.
Other online
shopping experiences:
