E-tailers to link up with govt’s consumer helpline
NEW DELHI: The government has directed e-commerce firms to align their consumer grievance redress systems with the state-run National Consumer Helpline for real-time monitoring and stricter compliance, amid a spike in complaints related to faulty products, denial of refunds, and payment issues, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
E-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart have started the integration process, three of the people cited above said.
The department of consumer affairs devised this strategy after consumer complaints in the e-commerce segment surged from 6% in 2016-17 to 38% in 2021-22. Clubbed with other online commercial activities such as cab aggregation, travel, pharmaceutical and food deliveries, and loan services, this percentage jumped to 75% of the total 640,000 complaints in FY22, the people said, requesting anonymity.
“Recently, the consumer affairs secretary interacted with some key e-commerce players and other online service providers, expressed government’s concern over rising number of consumer complaints, which, in fact, was the tip of the iceberg as many people, particularly of remote areas, are not yet fully aware of consumers’ rights. Hence, the government will also take other necessary steps to address this issue that involves lakhs of gullible consumers,” one of them, a government official, said.
According to another government official, senior executives of Amazon met the consumer affairs secretary in the first week of this month, while functionaries of Flipkart and Walmart (owner of Flipkart) from India and the US met him earlier this week. “Integration of their customer grievance redress mechanism is the first step in this direction. We will leverage technology and digital governance tools to further strengthen the system so that complaints are resolved in a timebound manner. This is work in progress,” the first official said.
The second official said the action was necessary as the nature of complaints was serious. It ranged from delivery of defective or wrong products, delays, wrong promises, payment issues to even non-vegetarian food being delivered instead of vegetarian.
A third person, an expert of the sector, raised some technical issues. “As e-commerce giants in India are not authorised to have their own inventory, they have no control over the items supplied by sellers on their platforms. If firms initiate action against erring sellers or blacklist them, they go to the court or approach the government saying multinationals are harassing small retailers,” he said.
A Flipkart spokesperson said: “We have a cross-functional team from our customer care organisation, supply chain and seller account management teams that monitor customer grievances across channels and strive to resolve them proactively and promptly. Simultaneously, we also have consumer grievance redressal system integrated with the government’s consumer grievance redressal system, while also working closely with lakhs of sellers/ MSMES on our marketplace to train them to ensure a better experience for our customers.” An Amazon spokesperson said the company is “proactively partnering” with NCH (National Consumer Helpline) since August 2016. “Amazon endeavours to resolve the complaints within 24-48 hours and has consistently maintained the high metric of 98% resolutions on the NCH,” he said. On May 4, Amazon executives met officials from the department of consumer affairs proactively “to evolve stronger and even more customer-friendly” services, he added.
“It was an important meeting and we remain engaged to work with the ministry to offer world class services and benefits to customers, as was seen during the pandemic. We as a company are committed to our marketplace customers and also provide a robust customer complaint redressal mechanism with Amazon Customer Service as well,” the spokesperson said, adding: “We cannot comment on the complaint numbers being speculated in media reports or the queries but there were no specific numbers discussed in this meeting,” he added.
The people mentioned above said under the integrated system, all customers’ grievances will be seamlessly and simultaneously registered – both in the system of the e-commerce player as well as the government helpline – which will have mechanisms to ensure compliance.