Delayed Claimed Settlement or Deliberate Fraud

I recently had a bitter experience with Lenskart. I never had that level of trust on most of these Indian unicorns. But, my hatred and disgust towards these crossed the threshold limit after a very bad incident at a Lenskart store. On Saturday I visited one of their local stores near my home. After trying many different styles of specs, and also having their free eye test, I ordered a pair of anti-glare spectacles with Japanese technology lens and also paid the amount which was not little. The amount got debited from my bank account on spot and they handed me a small payment receipt from their machine after the card swipe following the transaction. When I asked about the cash memo, they even assured me that it would be sent online to my phone. However the very next day, in the morning, they called me and told that my order got cancelled and that I would be getting my refund processed to the source account shortly. I mean, how can an order get cancelled automatically? And, where's my fault when the store has such shitty WiFi connectivity? That's where the story actually began. This landed me in a frenzy, especially as I knew that getting refund was not going to be an easy job in India. It's actually like a trigger to a gun. Once the amount has been debited, nothing can be done similar to what happens when the trigger to a gun has been pulled and the bullet has been fired. After researching a bit, I came to know that these types of transactions are typically called a failed transaction with a stuck debit, or a pending/unsettled transaction. Instead of panicking, I asked Gemini and ChatGPT. They suggested a number of steps to be taken step by step. I started going by them. But, you know what happens when you live in India, right? The one thing Lenskart was famously known for during its early disruptive growth years — but has since fundamentally changed — is its signature "First Frame Free" offer. When Lenskart was a rising e-commerce startup, they heavily marketed a bold, straightforward promise to acquire new customers: your very first spectacle frame was entirely free, and you only had to pay a nominal price for the basic lenses. This structure allowed millions of people to try out online eyewear shopping with virtually zero risk. It's very well known that in a country like India with sluggish customer grievance settlement service, how much frustrating the refund process can be. Even after multiple calls to the local store, chat with the customer support via the Lenskart android app and multiple emails and forwards to the customer service and customer grievance management team, I didn't get any concrete resolution or even any assurance that my refund would be processed. The customer service was as bogus as one could imagine. They had no idea that I already told them about my situation a day before and there was no coordination between them. They kept asking me my problem every single day! I had to explain same old story everytime for those duffers to understand. There was no customer empathy! How can one even think about buying any product from their stores when this fear of refund settlement haunts them every next time they think of placing an order and something in the payment gateway goes wrong? Even after doing all this, there wasn't a concrete confirmation and that haunted me. I had decided at one point that I would never do card swipe or UPI transactions for these kind of stuffs, only cash or COD (for online orders). I mean this is the epitome of negligence and worst customer experience! I think Lenskart should improve its customer centricity and services instead of focusing solely on those glossy and polished advertisement and marking their product prices exorbitantly high!