I then decided to get a few "Best of" CDs to complete my collection. I made a list of the stuff that I wanted and one Saturday while I was in town, I made a quick trip to Rhythm House to buy whatever I could. I found that they had virtually nothing that I wanted and when I asked for help this is what I got.
"Sorry we don't have this."
"When will you get it?"
"I don't know."
"Can you find out?"
"I'll have to go upstairs."
"So?"
"We are very busy."
I walked out. Not wanting similar treatment at Groove and Planet M, two recently opened music shops, I returned home.

I regularly buy books from amazon.co.uk, so I checked out their music section. They had everything I wanted and I decided to place my orders using their terrific "One-Click" method. However, unlike books, which are delivered by post without any customs or postal hassles, I wasn't sure about the rules for CDs. I emailed by brother-in-law in London who agreed to accept delivery at his house; he would send them to me with whoever was coming next to Mumbai.

I wasn't comfortable though. The thought kept nagging me that I was paying a hell of a lot more than necessary. Each of those CDs cost a minimum of 11 pounds (Rs. 800 plus), even after discounts and I was a little uncomfortable paying one and a half times more than what I would have paid locally. I kept thinking about this and suddenly recollected a site called fabmart.com that had been advertising its online music and bookstore and decided to give them a try. I had no intention of going to rediff.com, especially since I'd had two bad experiences with them; my orders were never executed and there was no follow-up despite sending repeated email reminders.

I registered at www.fabmart.com. After the smooth shopping experience at Amazon, I found their interface a little clumsy. But it worked and that was good enough. They had quite a few, though not all of the CDs I wanted and more importantly, all of them were priced under Rs 500, with 5-10% discounts and a Rs 5 courier charge. This was very attractive! I was still a little circumspect, this being an "Indian" site, etc. and I decided to try them out first with a single CD order. I selected "Queen: Greatest Hits" and paid with my credit card on Thursday the 19th. My order was approved by email the next day. I then received another email with a tracking number confirming that the CD was being shipped by Blue Dart Express and I would get it in three-four working days. I was impressed and I figured I would get the CD by Wednesday 26th or Thursday 27th at the latest.

By Wednesday, the CD had still not come. My secretary called Blue Dart with the tracking number only to be told that the CD had been returned to the company for reasons unknown. I emailed storemanager@fabmart.com, asking them what the problem was and the mail bounced back with a message that the disc quota had been exceeded. Think about it; bounced mail and the CD returned back to the company; the first thought I had was that fabmart.com had gone bust. The second thought was that I might be getting scammed. I was ready to call my credit card company to cancel the charge, but sheer laziness kept me from doing this immediately. I emailed Fabmart again on Friday the 28th only to get another bounce.

On the 1st, 10 days after my order was accepted, I received a call and email from Sonia Nagpal who apparently had received my mail. How an email could do both, go through and bounce back, is a mystery to me and I am sure some expert will have a convoluted explanation for this. After playing phone tag that day, we finally managed to talk and Sonia told me that Blue Dart had returned the package the same day because they claimed they had no service in my area. Fabmart had then sent it the next day by First Flight, which claimed that the package had been received by my office on the 26th or 27th. I was a little rude to Sonia because a) I couldn't fathom why Blue Dart would say that service was not available to an address in the center of Mumbai and b) I pride myself on an excellent office staff that would have not have slipped up on a courier delivery, especially since I receive almost 3-4 couriers every day. I wondered if there was a cover-up in progress.

Sonia had left the First Flight tracking number with my secretary, who called First Flight in Mumbai and was told that they were expecting the consignment in a day or so. Sonia called up again saying that First Flight in Bangalore was sure they had made the delivery and my secretary called up the Mumbai office again, only to be told again that they were expecting the delivery that evening. This was now Wednesday, the 3rd. Despite not having the CD, I was by now impressed by the fact that Sonia had already spent more on telephone calls from Bangalore than the cost of the CD and I was convinced that there was no scam, just a delivery snafu. Couriers in India are infamous, but that's another story.

Do you want to know how it finally ended?

Sonia faxed me a copy of the POD (proof of delivery) on Thursday night. I got it the next day and saw my company stamp on the damn piece of paper with one of my telephone numbers, but without a signature. I gathered all my staff and questioned everyone, threatening them with dire consequences. Finally one "smart" guy remembered something and took me to a room full of cardboard packages, part of a shipment of machines that had recently arrived and from somewhere underneath a few of these, fished out the package from First Flight. It had come in six days after my order had been logged with Fabmart, on the 26th, just as Sonia had claimed.

So now you can guess the rest. I felt like a fool, embarrassed and contrite and I immediately shot off a mail to Sonia apologizing for the whole thing. She replied back saying, "Please don't apologize. It was our duty to follow-up." And this after having suffered my rudeness and having spent more on telephone calls than the price of my order. They have converted me.

But do you know what the really funny part was?

Upset and fed up with the whole thing, on the 29th/30th weekend, I went to Heera Panna, a shopping mall that caters to imported goods and found a shop that stocks exactly the kind of music I like. I bought eight of the twelve CDs on my list, including the "Queen" that I had ordered from Fabmart, since I had begun to believe at the time that Fabmart was just another one of "those sites".

Now I have two copies of "Queen: Greatest Hits". Before I go to ebay, anyone for a trade?