According to a Facebook post by Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy, a resident of Borivali in Mumbai, the e-commerce site packed a bar of soap instead of the smartphone he had ordered.

It's not uncommon to hear bad experiences with e-commerce stories: your products are not delivered, sometimes they are lost and sometimes they are delivered to you, but not in one piece.

But, Snapdeal took it to a whole new level this time.

According to a Facebook post by Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy, a resident of Borivali in Mumbai, he opened a package containing what he thought was his new Samsung Duos smartphone, but turned out to contain instead, a bar of Vim soap and a brick.

The FB post was published on 24 October and was shared more than 16,000 times. On 27 October, Krishnamurthy commented on the post saying that it had been more than a week but Snapdeal had not resolved the issue. However, on 28 October, he commented saying, "Snapdeal has finally promised to return the money within 5-6 working days!!"

Firstpost got in touch with Snapdeal to find out what really happened. The company apologised for the goof up and said that the full amount would be refunded. The company added that they are investigating the issue.

This is what they told us on Facebook: "Sincere apologies for this issue; the trouble that the customer has gone through. We have already refunded the amount to the concerned person & the issue has been sorted out. Thanks."

In an email, this is what the Snapdeal spokesperson said:

“Snapdeal has a robust customer addressal system in place, where we ensure that users have the best shopping experience on our website. In the said case, we deeply regret the mix up that inconvenienced our customer. As soon as the case was reported our team got in touch with the customer and the issue was resolved by making a full refund to the customer. We are investigating the origin of this issue and will get to the root of the cause to rectify this, so that it does not repeat itself in the future. At Snapdeal.com, we strive to create the best shopping experience and will continue to work in this direction.”