Urbantouch.com Shopping Review and Strange Experience

Urbantouch is now a part of fashionandyou.com. This post is outdated now. Yesterday I was trying to make a purchase from Urbantouch.com after a long gap. I had a very strange experience, which I would like to share with my readers as this may happen with anyone during online shopping. I have ordered from them twice before and my experience was not so great (in terms of customer service), so I didn’t return to them. I needed a couple of products which were unavailable on my regular shopping sites, so I turned to Urbantouch.com.

I quickly added the two products I wanted to buy (1 quantity for each item), RECHECKED my cart and checked out. As I had shopped with them before, the Shipping page showed my previous billing address for selection. I selected that and confidently clicked on ‘Continue’ to make the payment. Gosh, I DID OVERLOOK SOMETHING on the shipping page, which I discovered later! The moment I was about to authorize the payment, I did a final check and found that the final payment amount had increased. I went back and was surprised to see a Venus Shaving Razor in my cart, which I never browsed or added. Anyways, I immediately cleared my laptop’s cache and cookies thinking they may be playing some game here. Please know that clearing cache and cookies empties your shopping cart.

After a while, I returned, added the two products again to the cart and repeated the steps. This time I noticed that on the Shipping page, which I had overlooked the last time, the quantity of the products had doubled automatically, which made the payment amount double too.  I was HORRIFIED! And this time I don’t think this was caused by cache cookies as I had cleared them before proceeding the second time. I didn’t take a screenshot the first time but this time I did. See below.

Urbantouch.com Checkout page. Click on picture to see enlarged view.

I have shopped safely with them before without ever facing such a problem and it is a famous online shopping portal catering to a hundred thousand customers or more every day. If you shop from this or any other online shopping portal, as an aware user, please make sure to check the final payment amount, the items and the quantity, as well the ‘https’ in the address bar before entering your payment details and before authorizing your payment. I have explained safe shopping in my Online Shopping Guide Part 3, which you can read here.

This may be a technical problem and I have written to them already. If it had been some new shopping site I have never used before, I would have definitely been wary, but this site is trusted by a big user base.

Even though their customer care is polite, they never reply to their emails promptly and I usually receive a reply in 24-48 hours, which is a turn off as compared to the prompt service I enjoy from Medplusbeauty and Goodlife.com. Moreover, if you send a message to their Facebook contact, they do not respond either. Their email responses are more of copy paste and they do not personalize their answer if you ask them about a specific product.

I am amazed at the speed they have grown in the past one year. See their website and your head will spin! So many products and then further so many product suggestions on each page, targeting you in the eye! This is the biggest Indian online shopping portal known to me. They send the orders in their special signature boxes: A beautiful Black Box with Urban Touch logo printed on it in Golden color. I even won a prize from them in one of their Facebook Contests last month and got it in a gorgeous Pink Colored Signature box with Ribbons and all. 

Variety: Unbelievable. You name it, they got it! You get everything: Makeup, Personal care items, Footwear, Lingerie, Bags, Jewelery, Perfumes and what not.
Website: Amazing. Loads super quick. Search button is superb and bang on!
Packing: Signature packing with thermocol and bubble wrap inside.
Delivery: Estimated 4-6 days. Mostly happens within 2-3 days in large cities.
Shipping Policy: Free shipping on orders of Rs. 500 or more. Shipping charges of Rs. 50 for orders below Rs. 500. This has been recently increased and far higher than other online businesses. (updated on 27 Nov, 2012) Shipping charges may vary for promotional offers. 80% of the orders are shipped within 24 hours. I received all deliveries in time.
Customer Contact: Email response within 24-48 hrs. Paid phone number but you can leave a call back request by clicking on the phone number on the home page and leaving your number there. I tried once after office hours and got a call back within 1 minute.

Call back option

Facebook Contact: Worst. The Facebook contact person doesn't respond and seems, doesn't pass on customer feedback to the company. I requested for smaller finger ring sizes several times, but they did nothing more than appreciating my feedback. One of the major reasons I turned away from them.
Discounts: Never saw a discount coupon from them. No promotional emails ever received. On comparison shopping, I did find good discounts on selective items on the site. Otherwise, most of the products are overpriced. So I buy very selective stuff from them.

Urbantouch: Great website, great everything, just treat your customers with a little more respect. You are, because they are!