E-commerce giant Flipkart has revised its return policy making it tougher to avail returns on many items sold on its platform. According to reports, the policy has been revised to cut operational costs. The company will no longer offer refunds on products like mobile accessories, computer and camera accessories, office equipment among others and higher-end items such as mobile phones, large appliances and furniture.
“Refunds are not offered. All sales are final,” says the return policy on its website for these categories. The e-commerce firm’s new policy which has been welcomed by their vendors is seen as a setback for customers.
According to an Economic Times report, now the Flipkart
customers can request for refunds through the self-service option on over 1,150 product categories of the 1,800 available, which constitutes about two-thirds of all the categories on Flipkart.
Last year, e-commerce platforms had offered full refund and no-questions-asked return policy to tempt Indian buyers into shopping online. However, such policies led to high logistics costs for these firms and sellers on their platform.
Flipkart’s rival Amazon India continues to allow refund in several categories including mobile accessories, large appliances, video games, books, software, furniture, sportsfitness-and-outdoor products, clothing, fashion accessories and handbags, according to its return policy on its website.
In June last year, Flipkart had discontinued its ‘no-questions-asked’ return policy. According to reports, the company is now aiming to achieve operational profits after it raised Rs 9,000 crore from Tencent, eBay and Microsoft.
