“It has been 12 days since I placed my order on Flipkart but still didn’t get the delivery. Worst experience ever on e-commerce,” tweeted Shiv Bali (BeingShivBali) on October 7. 

Similarly, an Amazon customer, Mohd Waquas (@waquaschaser007) wrote, “It is almost 4 days post the expected delivery date and I did not receive it.  Dear amazon could please explain this?” In addition to this, e-commerce customers have also complained about receiving the wrong products, order cancellations by sellers, and long waiting periods for refunds during the recently-concluded festive sale event. 

According to Redseer Strategy Consultants, e-commerce platforms have seen a 27 per cent y-o-y growth, clocking a sale of $5.7 billion in the first week of festive sale (between September 22 and 30). This surge in orders has impacted the delivery timelines of e-commerce majors like Flipkart, and Amazon, among others. 

Abhishek Maiti, Director, Praxis Global Alliance Labs (business research & market intelligence firm), told businessline that it is not unusual for surge in festive sale volumes to impact the e-commerce firms’ delivery timelines.  “E-commerce companies have instituted SLA (service level agreement) cover mechanisms for such cases and show extended timelines to customers. Highly stressed warehouses of supply chains are often suspended after they reach a threshold of orders. However, customers often miss noticing such changes in delivery timelines owing to the urgency of placing orders,” he added. 

Adding to this, Sanjay Kothari, Associate Partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants, said, “The average timelines might have been extended because of larger portion of Tier-2 and beyond customers. However, we have to wait for few more days to conclusively comment on the delivery timelines as some orders would still be in transit.” A Redseer report showed that shopper base increased by 24 per cent Y-o-Y compared with festive sale week 1 of CY21 with about 65 per cent of shoppers coming from Tier 2+ cities. 

A Flipkart spokesperson said that 85 per cent of all orders made over the Big Billion Days have already been delivered to customers across the country, through 65 million deliveries over the past 14 days, with the remaining scheduled in the coming days. On an average, Flipkart makes 100 million deliveries per month.

Further, an Amazon spokesperson said, “We have technology integrated in various parts of the supply chain that ensures safe, fast and accurate delivery of customer orders. In case of any exceptions caused due to technical errors, we take immediate action to help customers with a speedy resolution and have robust processes in place to investigate such instances”.

On the other hand, a Meesho spokesperson said the company has maintained a 48-hour order dispatch timeline for its orders during the festive season.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW