JJ Mehta & Sons, a popular mobile store, in Mumbai's Dadar area, makes customer run around over their price for a Sony mobile listed on a marketing website

On Christmas day, we found that a Sony S312 mobile phone was listed at Rs3,499 from JJ Mehta & Sons on compareindia.in.com. So, we visited JJ Mehta at Nakshatra Mall in Dadar, the same evening, to buy the phone. But the sales manager at the mobile store expressed surprise at the price we told him we had read on the website. He asked us to get a printout of the price listing. And when we got back with the printout of the webpage that we had saved on a pen drive, he clicked to the website and showed us the price at Rs4,499. It was then that we realised that we were sent away so they could buy time to escalate the price. But it felt as if we had manipulated the price on the printout to steal a good deal.

We called compareindia and told them about what had happened. They were co-operative and apologised about the matter, saying they would get in touch with the store to seek and official explanation. They also said that this was the first complaint with regard to JJ Mehta & Sons and that only in rare cases do they delist the dealer from the website. We haven't heard from them since.

We also emailed a complaint to JJ Mehta & Sons and received a reply expressing regret for the incident. "We regret for the confusion, please be assured there was a error in the pricing putup on their site. We try our level best to maitain prices but sometime we also do mistake ... you pointed out our mistake and we rectified the same. If you have any more queries do get back to us," was the verbatim reply written by Kartik Mehta.

It was a bizarre experience on how dealers can put you through inconvenience of making rounds instead of telling upfront they had incorrect price or cannot honour the price. It also raises questions about the authenticity of prices on the compareindia website, where price is of sole importance.

According to compareindia, a customer must carry the printout of the webpage listing the product and price. But don't rush to the store having the cheapest price because they may not honour the price on the printout. Besides, it is not a legal document. The price on the website could well be just to entice the customer to come to the store. Call and confirm if the dealer really intends to honour the price they have listed on the website and whether the product is available.

Unlike websites like ebay, compareindia is not oriented to complete the sale. It can best be used as a guide to prices and get a feel of the product features. Don't even rely on product features blindly. We found that Sony W205 mobile is described as having the 'Wi fi' feature, but unfortunately it's not true. That would have made it the cheapest 'Wi fi' mobile at Rs3,286, available in the market, beating even Micromax and Spice phones that have the Wi fi option!

Compareindia website specifies that "Best Prices mentioned have been provided by the dealer. Kindly confirm the Best Price and availability of stock with the dealer before visiting the store. Compareindia is not responsible for wrong or incorrect Best Prices published by the dealer and/or unavailability of the stock."

Learning from our experience, we called Hello Zone Telecom, also at Dadar, the same day. We told them the price they had quoted on compareindia for the Sony Spiro mobile which was Rs4,600. The dealer agreed to honour the price. Other stores in Dadar quoted Rs4,850 to Rs5,000. When we got to the store we asked about the price and were told that it was Rs5,000. When we referred to the phone conversation about the compareindia price, the dealer promptly agreed to the price without any argument and closed the deal.