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Well, I haven’t done many review on this blog (except for my test drive review in the Automotive category). Today, I am kick starting a new Review section here hoping that I can share my personal experiences with the numerous products and services that I have consumed online and offline.

Today’s review material is the Flipkart Online Store. Though they were established three or four years back, I didn’t quite use their services until earlier this year. It all started with some book shopping for my son back in March this year and once I was thoroughly impressed with their quality of service!

What does Flipkart Offer?

Like many online stores in India, even Flipkart started their business as an online bookstore (Check out Flipkart Books section). They then slowly spread their services into selling Music CDs, Movie DVDs, Video Games, Mobile phones, Electronics, Cameras and now even Home appliances.

Majority of my purchases from Flipkart have been around Children’s books, Music/game CDs and at times camera accessories as well – latest being a 50mm lens that I bought for my Nikon DSLR.

My Experience with Flipkart

Based on those six or seven purchases that I made with flipkart, I have the following feedback on their services.

• Their collection of books and other products are very good. Usually, they have all fast moving items in stock
• The web shopping interface is fast and easy to search, choose and checkout
• They offer very fast delivery, at least that’s what my experience in Bangalore. Almost all items that I ordered reached me in three days. Looks like they are using their own staff for delivery and hence chances of missing anything during transport is minimal. Talking about the delivery time, I had quite bad experience with some other online services such as Sify Shopping, India Plaza etc before I stopped using them completely quite some time ago
• Cash on Delivery option is very good to protect you from any online fraudulent activities
• Excellent communication – from ordering, processing, delivery to confirmation – they always keep you informed via SMS and mail

Other Positives

Once I had a situation where a particular book (Bunnicula series) had to be imported and shipped. They were able to manage it within a reasonable time frame as promised while placing the order.

Another time, I had ordered two books together off which one was guaranteed to be shipped in three days and another in a week. Instead of shipping both together a week after, they shipped one within three days and another within 5 days thereby filling the order partially based on immediate availability. The result was a happy customer – i.e. my 9 year old son.

The pricing of the books is good considering the fact that shipping is FREE. Some other sites show reduced prices but charge for shipping and handling.

Conclusion

Overall, I am pretty happy with the quality of service that Flipkart provides. They often reiterate that they always ship brand new items with warranty which so far is true for me. However, there are a couple of people who complained about receiving scratched CDs etc but that wasn’t the case with me.

Check out Flipkart for Yourself and share your experiences here. By the way, you can directly search on Flipkart using the search widget below.

I got to test drive the new Fiat Grande Punto 1.4 on Friday. In fact, it was a very pleasant experience – especially after my disappointing outings with the Hyundai i20 and Skoda Fabia – both being 1.2 litre engines.

The Grande Punto 1.4 in India, is almost a complete car with exceptional high-speed stability and driveability. It also comes loaded with nice features. As usual, there has been several India specific adjustments done – like cheap plastics and fabric – but the main part i.e. the engine rocks! Moreover, according to me, it’s the best looking car in that segment and the pricing is reasonable too.

Image courtesy: Fiat India

You can read my complete review of the Fiat Grande Punto 1.4 at Mouthshut

Happy Driving!

Skoda produces some of the finest cars in the world today. Their entry to the Indian market has been with the highly successful Octavia model. The Octavia’s market has been recently hit severely by the likes of Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla and hence Skoda wanted to get into the segments below that of Octavia and above as well.

Image courtesy: Skoda India

The Skoda Fabia 1.2L has been a successful product throughout Europe. Obviously, that prompted them to bring that model to India as well. However, when things are produced or marketed for India, it has to be tailor made to fit the Indian taste and that’s exactly where they failed.

The Indian mentality is mainly around mileage and resale value and not exactly build quality or safety. The pricing has to be reasonable and the after sales service is of the highest priority as well. Unfortunately, in all these aspects the Skoda Fabia failed miserably.

Please read my complete review of the Skoda Fabia 1.2L at Mouthshut.com

Happy Motoring!

I had a chance to test drive the Fiat Linea Petrol – Emotion Pack – a couple of weeks ago. I must say that, I haven’t seen any better looking car in this segment or for that matter even in immediate upper segment until today in India. It looks so beautiful, feel heavy and nice but unfortunately has a weak heart.

Image courtesy: Fiat India

Fiat make amends in India

Fiat had spoiled its image in India way back in 70s and 80s itself. Since then nobody seriously took Fiat as a serious brand probably except those Mumbai taxi drivers who still maintain their 1965 Fiats. However, eight years back, Fiat India surprised all of us with a stunning Fiat Palio which was a highly successful model. It went through many modifications and the next was the turn of the Linea.

If Palio was peppy enough and beautiful, its bigger brother has its European traits of inherited looks but it really drags on the road. The 1368cc (what a pity, it’s not even a 1.4L engine) petrol unit delivers a pathetic 115Nm torque at peak which means that you have to be somewhere in third or fourth gear to feel that the car can actually move. The engine offers a decent 90BHP power but nobody will feel it due to the poor torque.

The ground clearance is another area of concern. It hits almost every speed breaker on the road with just two people in the car itself and I can imagine the situation if the car is fully loaded. The car comes loaded with a lot of features such as Blue and Me blue tooth integration and the interiors are okay for the price.

However, a car is a car first because of its engine, anything else comes next. Due to the same reason, the Fiat Linea’s Indian edition is not a great car. On top of this Fiat’s notorious after sale service adds to the woes. Overall, the vehicle can be rated something like 3 out of 5.

You can find my road test report of Fiat Linea Petrol at Mouthshut.com. Let me know your thoughts on this beautiful laggard.

Happy Motoring!

I have been fascinated by cars and bikes from a very young age. I always watched, studied and admired them along with the various aspects of automobile engineering from my childhood. We did not have any car or bike in my house at that time and hence never got to try my hands on those coveted machines (if you can call them so) of that era. My first hands-on with a bike was at the age of 7 whereby I tried to ride my uncle’s Luna (do you remember that moped?) and got nice scolding and a couple of whacks for the same.

After I got my first job, the very first thing I did was to buy a bike. I, in fact, bought a Royal Enfield Machismo at that time – which was obviously a little too much for my thin frame :). After moving to the US for about three years, I got to experiment with a lot of good quality cars but most of them were auto-transmission models.

Coming back to India in 2001, gave me the opportunity to experiment with various nice cars. Since I always preferred driver’s cars over those who looked great or provided good mileage, I picked Maruti Zen as my first car in India. It was an awesome car to drive but I was yearning for more and hence in 2004-’05 I switched to a Ford Ikon 1.6 Petrol which, at that time, was probably the best driver’s car in India.

Ford Ikon 1.6 Review

Though, I have been writing car reviews here and there, I thought of organizing my auto reviews a little bit and hence started publishing them on my blogs. Unfortunately, some of them got closed due to other blogging priorities and hence I moved some of my reviews to Mouthshut.com.

My Ford Ikon review on Mouthshut is the first organized and complete review of that kind. You may please read the review and provide your feedback there itself. At some point, I plan to consolidate all my reviews on this blog.

Happy Motoring!