Amazon has become the second large Indian ecommerce store to stop delivering high value orders to customers who are ordering from Uttar Pradesh postal codes. Last year Flipkart has done the same.
Amazon India will not be delivering anything that is priced over Rs. 5000 to postal codes from cities like Noida or Ghaziabad. Flipkart’s limit for UP is Rs. 10,000. But looks like Amazon wants to cut the risk further and hence a lower limit.
Amazon has not officially announced this change, however, we tried ordering an item priced over Rs. 10,000 on a Ghaziabad postal code, and here is the message that Amazon gave us.
The error message was, “Sorry, this item can’t be shipped to your selected address. Learn more. You may either change the shipping address or delete the item from your order. ”
Interestingly, if you see the learn more section for this error message, Amazon says it could be due to following reasons:
- None of our courier services deliver to your area.
- The category of the item you ordered is not delivered by the courier service that delivers in your area.
So, while Amazon is not explicitly telling customers that these postal codes are not allowed for high value items, they are just giving the standard reasons.
When we tried to order a low priced item, sure enough, we were able to place the order. See the screenshot for the order worth Rs. 2400.
This clearly is an indicator that Amazon stopped delivering high value products to UP postal codes.
Why has Amazon done this?
Most ecommerce sites do not trust UP customers – the reason being that high volume of items from UP customers get cancelled or they decline to accept them on delivery after they have ordered expensive items on ‘Cash on Delivery’. Cases of fraud which involve use of stolen or lost credit cards have also been registered.
Cancellations and non-acceptance of CoD items take up lot of resources of eCommerce sites and transportation costs of high value products is higher and incur much higher losses if cancelled. Local and State taxes are again borne by the company. Overall, it severely affects the bottom-line and hence companies like Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal have stopped delivering the products to UP.
Unfortunately, the worst part is genuine buyers also get affected due to this limit.
What is your take on such a limit by Amazon?
They should on the least accept prepaid orders,this is the most lame excuse they could come up with.Also our governments tax restrictions are fucked up.They just want to harass the common man.
Beep off….becoz of some stupid person, innocent people are facing problems.
Hope this issue solve soon…amazon sorry for all this…
why flipkart is doing this .. due to some people m unable to buy things … and as many things are flipkart exclusive are facing problems. Hope problems will be solved soon.
Sanchit is right, Form 39 is required. The customer from UP has to get the form from local sales tax office and sent the same to the shipper (Amazone etc). The same form should be accompanied with the product.
If we are paying 100% at the time purchase then why they are no Delivering. I am i roorkee and i am seeing in flipkart that you cannot order a laptop where as you can order low value items.
There must be some tax reasons why they are not delivering when we are ready to pay at checkout.
If just COD is the reason why they reject to ship at those locations?
They can ban COD and charge us at the time of purchased, i think the actual reason is something else.
Sanchit Goyal’s argument seems more realistic.
Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal don’t really understand how things work in UP.
Why not to give it to Akhilesh or Mulayam ? They can deliver it personally and get money.
The another issue is of Sales tax. Legally only shipments upto Rs 4999 are accepted by Uttar pradesh sales tax authorities. If the amount is higher buyer has to provide Vat form 39. These guidelines are for Non commercial shipments and ecom shipments as well.
However similar guidelines are applicable for Uttarakhand, West bengal, Orissa and some north eastern states as well. Maybe they are enforced strictly in Uttar Pradesh.
I know this because I am in Ecommerce Business.
Dude, form 39 is for Sellers and not for buyers. So your argument fails brother.
It sad that genuine buys like me are not able to buy things from these sites. A lady in my Apartment building rejected the COD order because the delivery guy was not ready to open the packaging so that the lady can decide weather it’s what she ordered or not.
That is exactly the kind of behaviour (of a handful of few) that puts all the genuine buyers in trouble. None of you guys can now buy anything over Rs. 5000 from Amazon. I feel for you guys…