Student orders 1TB HD, gets strawberries instead

Here is another lesson on why you should always check the contents of a parcel ordered from online shopping portals before paying for it. A 20-year-old pharmacy student of Nirma University was duped of Rs 3,000 when she was delivered a box of strawberries instead of the 1TB hard disk she had ordered. She has submitted an application in Maninagar police station.

Cops suspect gang at work
It is suspected that there is a gang operational which intercepts customer orders placed on online shopping portals and then cheats them.


According to Shruti Chavda, a resident of Guru Govind Baug in Khokhra, her relative had ordered a 1 TB hard disk from online shopping site Amazon in her name. However, sometime later, she received an email from the e-com portal stating that her order had been cancelled due to technical reason.

“A few hours later, I received a call from a person who claimed to be from the portal and said they would be able to deliver the hard disk but I will have to opt for cash on delivery. I was fine with the COD option and agreed to these terms,” Shruti said.

The parcel was delivered to Shruti at her residence on Saturday. She said, “The delivery boy brought the parcel and I signed for it and paid him Rs 3,000 cash. But when I opened the package, there was only a box of strawberries. By then, the delivery boy had left. So, I called him up. He promised to come back and pick the parcel. However, since then the number has been switched off. I tried calling the shopping portal’s office in Ahmedabad but didn’t get a proper response.”

Meanwhile, Prasant Patel, the manager of the shopping website’s stock house in the city said, “We regret Shruti Chavda had such a bad experience while ordering from our website. We have investigating the incident to find out how this could have happened.”

Five more complaints
He added that this was not the first case of its kind. “We have so far received five complaints of similar cheating incidents. The modus operandi in all these complaints is same. Our job is to deliver the parcel that suppliers send. So, it is possible the problem is from that end. We will try to sort out the issue as soon as possible.”

Mirror tried to get in touch with the supplier but he was not reachable.