The messed up privacy of Indian consumer.
It was just a normal day for Pradeep, all he wanted was a good pair of headphones, he opened Amazon and browsed some products, selected a few and after reading reviews he bought one. Just like that, it’s so easy to buy things these days with all these online retailers like Amazon and Flipkart.
Amazon delivered headphones within three days, nice job!. It was a Bluetooth over the ear type headphone. Pradeep was excited about the product. He opened the box, the headphone was there in a nice package, with the shining black color, it had some good reviews and a good rating of 4.1 at that time. Pradeep was a techie he knew what he wants and he used to test things to their extreme like once he bought a phone everyone was talking about and he ran all kinds of benchmarks on it. This headphone from the new brand, it was cheap, only 3k INR!. Pradeep opened the package, the headphone was looking a bit cheap, Pradeep thought, might be because of cost-cutting measures they used some cheap plastic material, he paired the Bluetooth headphone with his laptop to give it a try, the sound.. it was terrible, he did not like it at all. The headphones were making noise, the sound was not up to the mark according to him, they were like some cheap Chinese product. Pradeep decided to return the product, the return was accepted, but this was not it, he wrote a review about the product too, rated the product one out of five, that’s it, he bought something else and moved on with his life.
One fine afternoon Pradeep was busy with his work, sipping his coffee and suddenly his phone rang, it was an unknown number after a long ring he picked up the phone, “Hello is this Mr. Pradeep?” said the eerie voice on the other side, Pradeep was confused he replied “Yes, this is Pradeep. who is this?”. Pradeep knew how promotional calls usually start, this call was not one of them. “This is regarding your purchase of the product XYZ on amazon.in” and the voice continued with describing the purchased product by Pradeep and its details. It was a call from the company executive of the headphone which he bought and returned. The executive then added, “Sir you have reviewed the product on Amazon, we are calling regarding the feedback of the product can you please share the details of what went wrong with the headphones?”. Pradeep was awestruck with this gesture! really someone is calling for feedback, the product had nearly 40–50 bad reviews, are they planning to call everyone?. With this thought he started describing technical things about the headphone, like what was not good and what could be done better. The executive patiently listened to him and continued “Okay sir we will forward this feedback to our product team, we are continually working towards a great consumer experience, as a token of goodwill we are willing to gift you the product XXX, from our lineup”, Pradeep was confused and a little happy too, he was getting a free product which was expensive than the previous one.
The executive then continued “Sir can you confirm you address — 123, B, ABC street, BCD complex, Bengaluru., and your mobile number is +91–91XXXXXX77, is this correct?”, and with this line, Pradeep felt a chill down his spine all the happiness was gone, the guy was not from Amazon, he was from some third party product company, how he knew so much about him, he knew the exactly where Pradeep used to stay and his contact number too. Meanwhile Pradeep was thinking all this the executive continued “Sir, I am sending you a link can you modify your review in a constructive manner so that our application team can understand consumer requirements better.” with this line of his Pradeep knew what exactly the executive wanted, he had the leverage he knew the address too other personal information and Pradeep already accepted the offered product earlier without knowing the price, there was no point in denying or not modifying the review on Amazon, Pradeep was against bribery, but he was stuck with the deal. Pradeep replied “Ok. will do that soon.”, but the executive knew all the tricks, he emphasized, “Sir can you do that now, so that I will send you the tracking number and close this as soon as possible, please open the link and follow my instructions”, Pradeep had no choice, he just agreed to modify the review, he opened the link, and asked the executive what to do now. The executive told Pradeep to remove the review, yes “modifying the review in a constructive manner” was no longer in the picture. Pradeep exactly followed his instructions and deleted the review. After deleting the review Pradeep immediately got the tracking email, his new product was dispatched. Pradeep was getting a headphone for free but he was not happy. It was against his morals and to top it off he was feeling violated, how can Amazon share personal details with the third party, aren’t they the mediatory and take care of all the product’s dispatch and returns, although it was a mare headphone from a small company but imagine what if instead of a small headphone company someone try to fight a huge Pharma company or the government itself.
This is the story of many Indian consumers, companies try to buy-out the bad reviews, for an individual buyer its a good deal but imagine about others, many people nowadays rely on reviews, and a good review from the certified buyer can turn many things around. With all these AADHAR, online portals, and websites privacy and security of an individual are a joke nowadays, and the bigger concern is people are not even worried about it, they either don’t care or they are not aware what and how their personal information can be used online. Privacy of the individual should be the highest priority and everyone should start taking it seriously.
