Ratings: 1/5

The online shopping portal Alma Mater Store (almamaterstore.in) was an unknown name to me till I read a novel ‘ How I braved Anu Aunty and Co-founded Million Dollar Company ’. While reading that novel I got really impressed by their dedication and concept so thought of giving it a chance.

Alma Mater Concept

In gist, Alma Mater Store prints customized t-shirts, hoodies etc. for a group of people . There is nothing new in customized t-shirts as I was using it in my school 20 years back. Alma Mater is also not the pioneer in online customization as already many stores are there. They just tried to market and sell that old concept in new bottle of online shopping portal.

They offer round neck tees, collared tees and hoodies. They offer customization for minimum 10 quantities. Their price too vary though very minutely, if the order is larger than 25.

Design

While enquiring about the costing they mentioned very proudly that their cost includes complete design services. I was in high hopes when I gave them the text to be printed on the tees. I was expecting something interesting and innovative from their end; instead they just mailed me the text in the same font typed on images of different colored tees. I was shocked by that and just asked them to modify it a little and make it italicized. If that is what they call designing, I bet a 5-year old can design better .

Payment

As per their conditions 50% payment has to be done in advance for order confirmation. They send me a link to make payments. That link was very ordinary and unprofessional . While entering organization name I was using a symbol in it and the payment was not processing and showing that ‘The page cannot be found’. There was no mention that I need not to enter symbols in my address. I randomly tried and finally was able to make successful payment. Amazingly there was no auto confirmation mail from Alma Mater or PayU-their payment partner. Means I cannot prove that I have made any payments to Alma Mater.

Delivery

This was the worst part of the whole interaction with them . While confirming order, they clearly mentioned that delivery will be done in 12-15 days. I made payments on March 1 and was expecting delivery by March 15 that was way ahead of a program to be held on March 26 (actually I ordered tees for an official occasion to be held on March 26). I got a call from them on March 14 that the order is ready and they need Form 50 to send it to my place. I got irritated as these things to be told in advance so that I could get time to arrange these official papers. Anyhow I mailed them the required form by next day morning and they informed me that my order is shipped by Bluedart.

I asked them the tracking details but they didn’t respond (calls and mails) for five days . Finally I got in touch with them and was informed that a certain form was not generated and so the material was not shipped. Finally the material was shipped on March 22 and was intimated to me on March 23. The material was received (or I should say, picked up by me from the courier office as they were to deliver it the next day) on March 26- just few hours before the event.

It is mentioned on their website that they use Aramex for delivery and on my request they told me to ship it by Bluedart. Then I got a call that there is some problem with Bluedart and they are shipping it by First Flight. Finally it was shipped by DTDC. Do I need to comment now on Alma Mater regarding delivery policies?

Customer Support

Let me explain my experiences with customer support incident wise.
1. Till the order was placed, customer support was regularly mailing me after every other day. In the words of Varun Agrawal (co-founder of Alma Mater), they were shamelessly advertising themselves and following me. They were very quick in responding and reacting.
2. Once the order was placed and when I really need the customer support, they were not there . I mailed them regularly for 8 days to get the shipment tracking details and no one responded.
3. I called them to get the tracking number and was given assurance of call back in 5mins which they didn’t do in even 5 days.
4. There is rarely a mention of concerned person or contact number in their email communication so you are always in blind that with whom you are communicating.
5. Even when I informed them that I have already read the novel by their co-founder, they didn’t stop themselves from sending me one whole paragraph at the bottom of every mail advertising that novel.
6. When the material was shipped by them, there was no follow up call from their side. I was expecting that because the delivery was delayed by 11days by them.
7. I asked them to make the invoice in the name of “ABC” and they mailed me the invoice in the name of “ABC” (commas included :P). It was one of the shocking experiences with Alma Mater that either they are ignorant or hardcore copycats.

Product

I was really irritated by their service and was hoping that their product would lighten my mood. But that didn’t happen and I am not at all satisfied by their product. It is made up of very ordinary material and the fitting is also not upto the mark . And the worst thing was that the size varied with color. I ordered 3 colored tees- blue, yellow & gray. Yellow ’L’ size was similar to ’XL’ of other two colors (there was difference of 1.5inches in the length). It was clearly visible in the stitching and the tag that these were manufactured by different manufacturers. For me it was the fault of their quality team that they couldn’t maintain the uniformity in their product line .

I was having high hopes with their screen printing but that was the biggest let down. The print was bleeding and there was no sharpness in it . The back of the tees has large text printed on it that looks very unclean and shabby. It is not at all looking professional. I gave them a text in small letters to print on tees front and on most of the tees it is not legible as the ink bleeding overlaps nearby letters. If this is the problem with their print quality then their design team should choose a font and size in such a way so that the bleeding doesn’t affect the legibility. It seems that there is no coordination between various departments of Alma Mater.

My words

It was my first attempt with bulk customization and everything went haywire. I know that this portal is in nascent stage but this is the right time when they need to attract and retain their customers. Customization is not a necessity or requirement but they have to make it so easy that people got attracted towards it.

Writing a novel is really an innovative marketing strategy and I came to know about Alma Mater because of that novel only. Good that they have marketed themselves but what about delivering the expectations of their customers . It is to be noted that while customizing you don’t need to sell a tees or hoodies but you have to sell an experience to your customers- a lifelong experience that forced them to come back again and again. Facebook or novel is ok but nothing can beat word-of-mouth publicity . People at Alma Mater may take it as negative review but I am sharing it as a feedback.