Currently, the ecommerce services in India are not subject to any standards and rules and hence consumers have to suffer a lot as they do not have proper knowledge and remedies available for them. But this is going to change very soon as a new section is being added for penalty in the upcoming Consumer Protection Rules.
As per the ministry of consumer affairs, the new section will be added for penalty which will cover issues of misleading advertisements, unfair treatment to consumers and several other things. Once this new addition is complete, Ecommerce stores and their vendors could face penalties if they violate Consumer Protection Rules.
The definition of Ecommerce is also being expanded in the new rules to include almost all kinds of online services as provided by big & small ecommerce players like Zomato, Yatra, Ola, Uber, Swiggy, and UrbanPro etc. But Business-to-Business services and goods will be excluded from this new section.
However, we wish more such sections should be added to protect the interest of consumers. Almost everyday thousands of innocent consumers are duped due to ever increasing ecommerce fraud that needs to be stopped firstly. Currently there is no minimum legal requirement for starting a web/ecommerce store, which is the root cause of these fake ecommerce stores. At Voxya, we educate & help consumers to stay away from these fake stores and extend our services to get relief if they have been victimized. You can check our Latest Scams page where we regularly update the list of fake ecommerce stores in India along with Scam phone numbers who will call you to cheat & extract money from you.
Overall, adding new section in the Rules is a good move by Government and it will definitely provide relief to innocent consumers in India who are struggling to get justice!