One of the major positives about buying products online is the generous return policy that most eCommerce sites provide in India. In an surprise move, Amazon India seems to have taken out that advantage when it come to mobile phone purchases on their portal.
The returns policy page of Amazon India has put up this message
Please Note: All Mobile phones that are fulfilled by Amazon, purchased on or after 7th February 2016, will have a replacement only policy. Mobile phone items that are fulfilled by Amazon will no longer be eligible for refunds. In case you have received a defective or a damaged mobile phone, you will be eligible for a free replacement.
Given that mobile phones are one of the highest selling products on Amazon, this a very important change.
The new no-refund policy is applicable only for mobile phone purchases and for all other categories the refunds are available. The policy page does not state anything in regards to what happens when a particular mobile phone is not fulfilled by Amazon.
The customer can only ask for replacement within 10 days of receiving the mobile phone, after which replacement will also not be provided by Amazon.
Customers, while buying a product online, keenly read through the site’s return policy as they can only check the product after they have made the purchase and it arrives at their door-step. Now with Amazon coming up with no-refund policy, their mobile phone sales are definitely going to take a hit.
When if comes to competition – Snapdeal offers 7 day Easy return no-questions-asked policy, where they can get refund within 7 days of placing the order Snapdeal. So, even if there is no issue with the product and you want to return it for refund, you can do so with Snapdeal.
Flipkart has a similar policy, where customers can return the product within 10 days for full refund. You can check out the details here.
Why did Amazon take this step?
Amazon has a return/refund policy even on the global site. Mobile phones too are eligible and have a generous 30-day return-with-full-refund policy. In India however, it seems number of customers may have take undue advantage of the refund policy. This may have forced Amazon to take stop the refund policy on mobiles.
We are trying to find the real reason for this step, we will update this post if we hear something officially from Amazon India.
[…] India, in February of this year stopped providing refunds on Mobile phone purchases. They have now extended this rule on other electronics products as well. As per the updated returns […]