Amazon India, the e-commerce giant has changed their refund policy and will be no longer providing refunds for smartphones under return policy for their Amazon Fulfilled products. This does not mean that you are left without any option in case a faulty product reaches you, the company is offering 10-day replacement policy for faulty or devices with defects.
The policy is active from 7th February and users who want to get a refund by returning the device when found faulty cannot do so from now. The step seems to be taken to cut down on the losses due to the huge number of unwanted returns.
According to a statement in Amazon India’s return policy page, “All mobile phones that are fulfilled by Amazon, purchased on or after 7th February 2016, will have a replacement only policy. Mobile phone items that are fulfilled by Amazon will no longer be eligible for refunds.” There are many items which are not eligible for return policy, the categories which are not eligible for refund are baby and personal care products, jewelry, software, and video games.
If you are feeling bad about the removal of refund policy it was never easy to get a refund for mobile phones in the first place. It required a letter from any authorized service center to initiate a refund which was a very complicated and time-consuming process. The returned phones were then returned to the distributors and not the retailers as they cannot be sold as new ones.
With other e-commerce sites like Flipkart, they will be refunding only if the seller is not able to ship a replacement or the item is out of stock. And with Amazon’s new return policy, there is no description regarding the process when the seller is not able to ship the product or when the product is out of stock. The new policy is applicable for Amazon-fulfilled products only and other sellers will be able to outline their own return policy.
