Amazon India halts order placement of low-priority items, focus on delivering essential products

E-commerce giant Amazon India on Tuesday said it has temporarily stopped taking orders and disabled shipment of low-priority products as it focuses on delivery of essential items like household staples, hygiene and other high-priority products amid the country-wide lockdown to fight the spread of coronavirus.

The company, in a blogpost, said these changes are effective from Tuesday and that it will reach out to customers whose orders of low-priority products are pending.

They will be given a choice to cancel their order and receive a refund for prepaid items, it added.

"...we are seeing an increased demand for priority products and important services. To serve our customers' most urgent needs while also ensuring safety of our employees, we are temporarily prioritising our available fulfilment and logistics capacity to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as household staples, packaged food, health care, hygiene, personal safety and other high priority products," the blogpost said.

The company said, "this also means that we have to temporarily stop taking orders and disable shipments for lower-priority products."