Improving State of E-Commerce - Addl Inputs

Friends:

Now that the Consumer Affairs Ministry will be reviewing the circle whitepapers and grievances, we are re-starting the discussions. Below are the Issues, Root Causes and Solutions to improve E-Commerce for consumers in India.

Please review and share your inputs. When sharing please highlight with a Prefix (Issue, Root Cause or Solution). We will soon put together a whitepaper for the Ministry so actions can be taken on this front.


Improving State of E-commerce in India – Key Solutions

1. A monitoring agency should be set up to overlook the working of the e-commerce industry
2. Rules and regulations should be strictly enforced by the regulators
3. Consumers should be empowered to report misdeeds of E-Commerce companies to authorities on fingertips
4. The return/replacement process should be simplified
5. A proper complaint redressal system should be developed
6. There should be heavy penalty on misleading ads
7. Hiding any product details should be made un-lawful and should lead to a process where the company could be banned
8. Delivery commitments should be strictly adhered to, failing which customer should be compensated monetarily
9. Refunds should be system generated and instant
10. No warranty on products should be mention in big bold letters in product description
11. Fake sites should be identified and banned
12. Strengthen existing laws to check fly-by-night operators
13. The supply chain and logistics should be strengthened
14. A robust mechanism to check the authenticity of the products and prices including the discounts should be in place
15. Awareness program needs to be carried rigorously by the government making ordinary citizens aware of their rights.


Ecommerce Sites in India – Root Causes for Issues

1. There is always a difference between seeing a product physically and seeing pictures of it
2. Competition is high and all the companies want to beat each other
3. Many ecommerce sites are selling goods at below cost and burning investor capital to raise more investor capital by showing revenues
4. Sellers feel that putting in all the details might hamper the sale of the product
5. Inferior quality goods are also sold at higher prices to make more profits
6. Ecommerce site accept more orders than their logistics can handle
7. The primary objective of some ecommerce site is sales and they ignore the customer after that
8. A lot of sites out rightly deny that the product could have been delivered defective
9. The delivery mechanism is not up to date
10. Cheap Chinese electronic goods are sold which look good but are of bad quality
11. Companies try to lure the customers on their sites by showing incorrect lower prices on their sites
12. Ecommerce companies do not work on the ‘store’ concept to minimise the fixed cost of operations
13. Not all e-commerce sites follow internationally accepted norms of delivery and service
14. No process of tracking the fly by night operators or fake sites
15. No common consumer grievance site to put across complains
16. No specific regulatory agencies to govern these sites
17. Lack of public awareness about whom to approach for justice
18. Lack of initiative from government to protect citizens money
19. No strict enforcement of rules by the government encourages errant e-commerce sites
20. The is no proper consumer protection act against these E-Commerce companies
21. Consumers also do not always raise their grievances as they should


E-commerce Sites in India - Key Consumer Issues

1. Product description on the retailer website is not detailed and accurate
2. The product pictures on the site sometime do not give the true description of the product
3. Inferior quality goods are supplied
4. Delivery dates are not honoured
5. The after sales service from some of the websites is bad
6. Replacement on the products delivered for damage or non -working is also very cumbersome and may never happen
7. A complete complaint redressal system is missing on most of the ecommerce sites
8. The deals offered on website many times mislead the customers
9. Products are not delivered on time
10. Refunds take a long time
11. Many electronic products do not carry any warranty
12. Fly-by-night operators have also been prevalent in the market
13. E-commerce sites show one rate in print ads, but going to the websites show another rate
14. Some products are sold using fake company IDs
15. No service centres to meet face to face more