E-tailers' 'boycott' of Noida, Ghaziabad triggers row

The social media was abuzz on Thursday about how e-commerce firms such as Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are finding it difficult to service certain areas in Noida and Ghaziabad due to increased instances of fake orders or manhandling of their delivery staff.

While some of them have set limits on cash-on-delivery (COD) orders, others are resorting to blacklisting certain pin codes and addresses. Though e-commerce companies have been facing this challenge since the very beginning, the issue was reignited after an anonymous post on discussion forum Quora.

The unnamed post was in response to the question: Why are Amazon and Flipkart not delivering products in Noida? The person who claimed to be working with the risk investigation team at Amazon said, "For some reasons, the order abuse cases in these regions is higher (than) that (of) the rest of India. People used to order iPhone and mention they got a Nokia model phone. They mentioned the iPhone was not working and so customer service used to initiate return and what did Amazon got in the return package, bricks, biscuit packets, cardboard pieces. It's very easy to play fraud with Amazon and Flipkart (sic)."

RISK MGMT

• Instances of fake orders or manhandling of staff
• Some have set limits on COD orders
• Others are resorting to blacklisting certain pin codes and addresses
• A person, claiming to be with the risk investigation team at Amazon, says Amazon & Flipkart have reduced COD options to Rs 5k & Rs 1k, respectively

The person claimed that Amazon had the highest number of fraud cases emerging from Noida. "Our delivery boys were locked up in the bathrooms, some beaten up, for the most silly reasons ever, give me my change of 2 rupees, the POS not working, the order was late, order was not functioning… These customers place the order just for fun using COD… Due to this, lot of logistics and supply chain is lost. (sic)" In order to tackle this problem, Amazon and Flipkart have reduced COD options to Rs 5,000 (by Amazon) and Rs 10,000 by Flipkart, the person added.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Standard the company continues to service in Noida. In order to deal with fake orders and deliveries, the company has put in place robust systems and processes to detect unscrupulous behavior on the part of customers and takes due action on a case-to-case basis. "We believe that an overwhelming majority of the customers are well-intentioned. Our focus is to minimise friction for good customers and deliver them a great experience as we don't believe in penalising the vast majority of well-intentioned customers."

A Flipkart spokesperson said the company supplies to many cities in Uttar Pradesh and has two warehouses in the state - one at Dasna and another newly opened one at Dadri. "However, for any shipment sourced from outside the state, the government has set a limit of Rs 5,000, as per the commercial tax department. Our focus has always been to provide a seamless and unmatched shopping experience to the customers, while ensuring all compliance with the law of the land," the spokesperson added.

A Snapdeal spokesperson, however, said it has not faced any issues with regard to delivery of orders in these areas.

To the post on Quora, which started the discussion, many people responded with how they too faced issues with getting delivery from e-commerce sites and sometimes even Pizzas at late hours due to episodes of "mugging".

The problem seems to be more acute for people who pick cash on delivery instead of those who "pre-pay" for the orders since the likelihood of an order being fake is reduced if it is already paid for.