If you are planning to purchase a new mobile phone from the popular E-Com site, Amazon in India, you may want to be a little careful now. Amazon has decided to make a tweak in their refund policies, whereby if you buy a phone that is Amazon fulfilled, post the 7th of February, 2016, you will not be eligible for a cash refund. Instead, if you get a faulty product or a product that is not right for you, will exchange it for a different unit, but you will not be refunded cash.
Starting tomorrow, mobile phones will not be eligible for refunds on Amazon India. Replacements will still work.
— Harpreet (@Harry_Jerry) February 6, 2016
This is a welcome relief from the order cancellations that seem to be plaguing the E-Com sector in India. According to data received at Pricebaba.com, a leading price comparison website, about 566 cancelations were received by them from a leading E-Com partner (not amazon), which amount to about Rs .2 million in just a month.
Thinking of purchasing new mobile from @amazonIN .Please check the new return policy for mobiles w.e.f. 7.2.2016. pic.twitter.com/a6IW4nMfuz
— Sandeep Parashar (@Bharatwalaa) February 7, 2016
This is a big number and without a doubt a loss for the portal as well as the affiliate partners, who have facilitated the transaction. The reason why the consumers have got into the habit of cancelling the orders are many. One of the prime reasons being that the user buys a device off several portals at one time on CoD and then proceeds to go on and cancel the order from all the portals once the order is delivered from any one of them, resulting in cancellation. Another reason is some consumers, just buy the device to play around with it, and after experiencing it, return it just because they were not sure about what they were picking up. A lot of this stems up from the efforts made by E-Com players in order to earn the trust of the masses but sadly that has been misused by the buyers. We ranted about how lenient policies of E-Com players are spoiling the habits of buyers, and this is a welcome move by Amazon.
Consumers will have to have the right intent now when they buy a phone off Amazon at least, as they know they will not be getting their money back, resulting in lower cancelation. The consumers will still be able to exchange their devices within ten days of purchase, but that is pretty much all. The policy doesn’t apply for phones that are not Amazon Fulfilled, so if you are looking to make a purchase, just for the fun of it, you still can have some joy.
