All the ecommerce users in India, this is something that you might want to take into notice before making your next big online purchase.

The Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, C R Chaudhary, recently informed the Parliament that the government has received over a whopping 1,386 complaints against e-commerce and direct selling companies through its National Consumer Helpline till December last year.

According to the facts laid out by Chaudhary in the Lok Sabha, among the leading e-tailers in the country, e-bay topped the list with 135 complaints, closely followed by Snapdeal with 120 and Amazon with 114 complaints. Flipkart stood at fourth position with a double digit number of 92, followed by whaaky.com at fifth with 79 complaints, Shopclues at sixth with 47 complaints and the post-demonetisation famous e-wallet company Paytm took the seventh position on the list with 46 complaints filed against it by its consumers. Interestingly, Myntra, Flipkart's fashion arm had just two complaints as against Flipkart's 92.

Not only did Chaudhary made the Parliament aware about all the statistics associated with the complaints received through National Consumer Helpline, but he also told the members of the house that all of the 1,386 complaints received were dealt by the department concerned as per consumer grievance redressal procedure. He also emphasised on the fact that as of now there is no proposal to regulate the country's e-commerce platforms by bringing in a separate law.

Out of the 1,386 complaints received by the government through the National Consumer Helpline, bookmyoffer.com received a maximum of 449 complaints. Simultaneously, Homeshop 18 (a venture of Vaicom 18) received 15 complaints, Jabong.com tied with Homeshop 18 with 15 complaints, naaptol.com received a total of 13 complaints, Shop CJ Network India received 10 and askmebazar.com received a total of just 6 consumer complaints till December 2016.

Resonating with the facts furnished by Chaudhary is a recently consumer study conducted by research firm Red Seer Consulting that for the fourth time in a row ranked Flipkart as India's most trusted e-commerce brand, above competitors Amazon and Snapdeal. While the government received a total of 120 complaints for Snapdeal and 114 complaints for Amazon, it received just 92 complaints for Flipkart, a number that is much low when compared to the number of shoppers that shop from these website every day.

The year 2016 was a moderate growth year for the Indian Consumer Internet sector, compared to previous year. For the financial year 2015-2016, Flipkart reported a whopping Rs 5,223 crore in losses, while Amazon with Rs 3,571 crore in losses came in at second position and was followed by Jasper Infotech run Snapdeal, which more than doubled its losses from previous year to Rs 2,960 crore. It is interesting to note that for the financial year 2014-15, the combined loss of the three largest e-commerce companies in the country came out at Rs 6,031 crore (Amazon: Rs 1,724 crore, Flipkart: Rs 2,979 crore, Snapdeal: Rs 1,328 crore), a figure which was almost single-handedly chased by Flipkart with Rs 5,223 crore losses in the next financial year.

A bill called the Consumer Protection Bill 2015, has already made its way into the Indian Parliament that seeks for the government to set up a central consumer protection authority in the country that can look into, scrutinise, inter alia, unfair trade practices.
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