Botched deliveries take toll on Amazon and Flipkart festival sales

Flipkart claims that over one billion customers visited its platform during the eight-day-long The Big Billion Festival. Amazon’s Great Indian Festival 2022, which will go on for a month, is throwing discounts at customers that can hardly be ignored. But some of the stories that are coming out from these sales are not so great.

Many users took to Twitter and LinkedIn to talk about their unpleasant experiences.The story of Yashaswi Sharma has gone viral but many other botched deliveries do not get highlighted as they are not high-end electronics goods.

For Sharma and his father, it was a shocker to see Ghari Detergent bars in the package instead of the laptop that was ordered.

In case of Delhi-based Neha Sharma (name changed), it was a simple plastic tooth-brush holder that she had ordered but was surprised to see a baby ear cleaner.

In yet another case, Sridhar Kumar from Bengaluru spent a considerable amount of time filling up his cart with the stuff he wanted, but as he proceeded to pay on Amazon, things never moved. After waiting for almost an hour, he gave up.

The exact number of orders gone wrong is not being disclosed by companies. Some of these incidents are raising questions of the basic premise of online orders being seamless and genuine.

Many such cases have come to light despite both e-commerce giants having a full-refund policy and an open-box delivery system in place. This allows customers to inspect their orders upon delivery.

When contacted, Amazon — in an email statement — said: “We have technology integrated into various parts of the supply chain that ensures safe, fast and accurate delivery of customer orders. In case of any exceptions caused due to technical errors or fraud, we take immediate action to help customers with a speedy resolution. We have robust processes in place to investigate such instances.”

Flipkart echoed a similar stance, promising full refunds in case of mishaps.

“As a marketplace, we connect sellers across the country with millions of customers and always strive to provide the best customer experience. In the event of an order cancellation, refunds are issued,” said a Flipkart spokesperson.

However, whether customers are able to reorder the products at their original discounted prices depends on the price listed by the seller on the platform.

Flipkart added, “As a customer-centric organisation, and a homegrown marketplace, Flipkart has a well-defined and continuously improving programme to help our customers and address their grievances. There are many efforts and policies in place to ensure a smooth customer experience,” said the Flipkart spokesperson.

E-commerce platforms attributed the surge in mix-ups to the increase in the number of orders placed amid festival season sales.

“Every year, thousands of associates and partners across our fulfilment centres, sortation centres and delivery stations prepare for the Great Indian Festival. Our fulfilment centres across 15 states with 43 million cubic feet of storage space, sortation centres across 19 states and over 1,950 Amazon-owned and partner stations have geared up for the festive season. We have 28,000 space partners and thousands of flex partners ready to deliver smiles to customers across the country,” an Amazon spokesperson said.