The police recently arrested a 32-year-old Bengaluru woman for allegedly conning the e-commerce giant, Amazon by returning fake products and selling the originals on other selling portals. The online retailers have been reportedly duped of Rs 70 lakh.
According to reports, the woman who has been identified as Deepanwita Ghosh used to reportedly buy products from Amazon and taking the advantage of company’s flexible return policy returned fake products within 24 hours once it was delivered to her. However, she would also allegedly go on to sell the original products on other shopping websites. She also had a different delivery address and the return address.
A native of West Bengal, Deepanwita ordered products including expensive cell phones, cameras and other gadgets online with fake names and had made 104 such purchases on the website. The incident came to light and she was taken into the judicial custody after Amazon representative Denu T Nair filed a complaint with the police.
“Every time, the delivery address was different from the return address; they were often in different cities. After getting a repayment from Amazon to her bank account, Ghosh would replace the product with a substandard one and hand over the package to the delivery person,” News Minute quoted deputy commissioner of police, Bengaluru east as saying.
Reports suggest that following this incident, Amazon will bring a change in their return policy. “Now, products like cellphones are received from customers only after verifying IMEI numbers and other items following corroboration of unique product codes apart from an inspection. An acknowledgement with the customer’s signature is also obtained during return of expensive items,“ a company warehouse executive told the Times of India.
