I am just back from a shopping expedition to the Pantaloon shop in the Cross River Mall, East Delhi and did some shopping over there. A couple of things struck me as very odd:

1. I have a frequent shopping card (’Green Card’) with Pantaloon, but I normally do not carry such cards in my wallet because the wallet has to contain a lot of items (including credit cards), and to carry such retailer cards is just not possible all the time. My purchase was an impulse buy, and when I mentioned to the cashier that I am a member, but do not carry the card, my expectation was that the cashier would ask me for my name and search for the number. To my shock, the cashier said that usage of the card was just not possible if the card is not carried. This was surprising since other retailers such as Globus, Pyramid, etc do their best to help you even if you do not carry the card. This policy followed by Pantaloon smacked of a not very customer friendly policy.

2. My wife had bought a dress earlier from Pantaloon in a sale, but the size was small. So I was deputed to go to Pantaloon and get a bigger size. I reached there, and they informed me that if a bigger size is available, then I will get it. However, if a bigger size is not possible, they showed me the policy outlined on the placard on the wall. “No exchanges / refunds in case of a sale”. This seemed very strange to me. Does putting a dress on sale mean that the customer’s money is any less valuable ? Another typical case is when you take a cloth home from a sale, and you find a manufacturing defect. It can be a real headache to try and get the item exchanged (I actually had a pretty bad experience regarding this with Pyramid earlier). In this case, they did have a bigger size, and I was able to make my wife happy; but I was left wondering as to what I would have done in case the size was not available, as all trends seemed to indicate that I would be stuck with the dress that I have.

3. Based on these experiences, I went to the Pantaloon web-site to give my feedback, but they just do not have a form on the web page where you can provide feedback. An email Id is listed for which you need to fire up the email client, and then send the email. Putting a form on the web site seems like a fairly easy thing to do, and seems to indicate that not much thinking goes on regarding the need to gather customer feedback.