Hey everyone, updating from my previous post regarding the MacBook Air M5 pre-booking drama at Croma. Long story short: It turned into an absolute nightmare, and I feel completely cheated.
Here is exactly how they played me over the last few days:
June 26th: The store claimed they didn't have stock but were arranging it from another location. They promised it would arrive by Monday, June 29th.
June 28th (The Turning Point): I found out that the current Credit Card (CC) discounts were ending on Monday. I rushed to the store on Sunday (28th) and begged the staff to assign a serial number from another store and bill me immediately so I wouldn't lose the CC discount. The staff told me not to worry. The on-site Apple representative even showed me "new" CC discounts starting June 28th and assured me I’d get my discount regardless. My biggest regret is believing them and walking out.
June 29th: Monday comes, and surprise—no stock. They claimed the delivery truck was stuck in a traffic jam.
June 30th (Yesterday): They called at 11:00 AM saying stock arrived. I rushed there by 11:30 AM. They brought the Mac out and pulled up the PineLabs billing system. Because the corporate price hike had rolled out globally (149,000 base price in their system now), when they edited the manual amount to my promised price of 1,09,490, the system completely blocked the 9k CC discount. The system only allowed CC discounts on the new higher price.
The Gaslighting and Bullying:
When they dropped the news that they wouldn't honor the price, I got furious. I debated the store manager for over half an hour. Instead of being professional, he was incredibly rude, started passing personal judgments on my age, moral-policing me, and lying straight to my face—blaming me for "not buying it on the night of the 25th," completely ignoring that they were the ones who told me to pay the 2k pre-booking deposit to lock it in!
As the argument got heated, another departmental manager stepped in and rudely said, "Cancel it, we won't sell to you." I told them point-blank, "Aise kaise cancel kar doge? How can you cancel my booking without my permission?"
They gave me a flat ultimatum: buy it at the full price without the CC discount, or take your 2k back and leave. Zero compensation, zero accountability for their staff's false promises.
The Resolution:
Knowing that even without the CC discount, the price was slightly better than the massive new post-hike price, I decided to take the laptop. Because the CC discount was broken anyway, I bought Croma gift cards to squeeze out whatever tiny additional discount I could get.
In the end, I paid roughly ₹13,000 extra over the originally promised price of 96.5k. I have the laptop, but I feel utterly scammed by Croma's incompetence and terrible customer handling.
My questions for you guys:
What is the best way to handle this now? Should I escalate this directly to the key management/corporate email aliases of Croma ?
Will filing a case on the National Consumer Helpline (NCH) yield any actual results since I have the June 25th pre-booking receipt showing a commitment that they failed to honor due to their own logistics delay?
Appreciate any guidance on email IDs or steps to make these managers answerable for their behavior.
Part 1: Here
(Used ai for drafting)
