Saddled with what you suspect is a fake item and not the branded one you ordered? Stuck with a counterfeit but no chance of grievance redressal because of a lack of channel for it? ‘No returns’ policy being manipulated to send you unwanted or wrong items? You are not alone.
A nationwide survey has called to question the dubious practices being indulged in by online shopping sites, including some of the biggest names in e-commerce and quick commerce in the country.
According to the survey, nearly half of all online shoppers ended up with at least one wrong product over the past one year.
The situation gets exacerbated due to the opaque refund or replacement policies of many e-commerce platforms.
The survey by LocalCircles covered 1.2 lakh consumers across the country, and has some startling data that should wake up the nation’s consumer protection authorities: while nearly half of online shoppers ended up with at least one wrong product in the last one year, one in five customers received a fake or counterfeit product at least once in the same period.
The grievances pile up, especially in the fast-growing quick commerce segment — nearly one in three shoppers said they are not happy with returns and refunds policies and processes of any platform.
Consumers allege that certain online sellers are taking advantage of the non-returnable product category and shipping different goods or in some cases, a counterfeit product. This trend was found mostly prevalent in the shoes, cosmetics and fragrances categories.
Worse, only four out of 10 shoppers who ended up with counterfeit or fake items were able to get them exchanged or refunded. Reason? Platforms terms that specify ‘no replacement’, or because they could not raise a complaint as there were no direct and easy means to do so. As many as 43 per cent of customers with complaints found they could not figure out how to report a fake product being sent by a seller, even.
“This works in favour of the bad sellers who are selling counterfeit by design as it delays their identification by the platform thereby leading to more consumers getting impacted,” alleged a statement released by LocalCircles Thursday morning.
Recently, e-commerce major Flipkart was fined Rs 10,000 by a District Consumer Redressal Forum in Mumbai for refusing to take back a nutritional supplement sold through its interface, which the customer claimed was counterfeit.
The Consumer Forum pointed out that the e-commerce major was “under obligation to ensure that the products being sold from its e-marketplace are of good quality.”
With online shopping increasing by leaps and bounds in the country — some estimates put it at 7 per cent of all retail in the country—it is imperative that sellers and online platforms get more vigilant.
“Sellers are listing product X as non-returnable on platforms and shipping Y. Consumers (get) stuck as (there is) no easy return/replace option found in process flow,” said a spokesperson for LocalCircles.
“Also counterfeit is not reducing. Worst (is) for consumers to receive a counterfeit and it’s non-returnable!”, he added.
“A section of the consumers allege that sellers are taking advantage of products with no return and some sellers are shipping different products by design as they know that the consumer does not have a return option,” alleged the LocalCircles statement.
