vitamin c. A minute’s purchase, months of hassles

What's the most important, yet invisible, clause in a product warranty? Simple, “all warranty clauses expire upon bill payment.” Well, this might be a sick joke, but several consumers in India — especially those who shop online — have good reasons to agree with it. Online forums are flooded with consumer complaints on warranty mess-ups of all hues. In several cases, claims are denied outright; in many others, the fine print has turned out to be a puzzle that the hapless consumer deciphered the wrong way. In sum, for the consumer, it’s a buy gone kaput.

There are numbers to back this whining. Last year, a study conducted among 20,000 consumers by mysmartprice.com found that nearly 54 per cent of warrant claims for products bought online were denied. While it’s easier to claim warranties in metro cities, for consumers in small towns, the exercise becomes a pain, the study found. What about consumers in villages? Well, you just forget about claiming your warranty. It doesn’t exist there at all. If at all it does, it’s a logistics nightmare.

My father would vouch for this. Just a few months ago, I bought a smartphone from a major retailer online and gifted it to my father, who lives in a village in Kerala. In a couple of months, the phone stopped charging. When he showed the phone at the nearest brick-and-mortar mobile shop, they told him it enjoyed a warranty and so it could be returned to the seller and that he might even get a replacement. But by now, the e-tailer’s 30-day return period was over. So, I told my father to contact an authorised dealer who, very conveniently, sat some 40 km away from where my father lived. To cut to the chase, after three visits and losing some man-hours, my father managed to get the phone repaired.

Now, my father tells me that had I let him buy this mobile phone from a neighbourhood shop, at a higher price of course, he would have been saved the ordeal as the shopkeeper would have taken care of the warranty worries.

It seems he has a point. And his point is even endorsed by certain companies. Reportedly, a few consumer electronics companies are even planning to stop offering in-warranty free support services for products shopped online. The list of products does not include smartphones now but it features several big-ticket items such as refrigerators, ovens, and so on.

E-tailers assure us that such worries are baseless. Flipkart, in reply to reports that some e-commerce firms are termed “unauthorised” sellers, said it sells only original products covered by replacement policies and manufacturers’ warranty and hence all authorised centres should attend to warranty requests on products bought from them. As the chaos goes on, consumers are getting awfully confused and in all likelihood a considerable slice of the populace will decide to pick offline sellers over e-tailers. That can cause a serious dent in the dreams of India’s e-commerce industry. And it’s a loss-loss deal for all. Hence, it’s time this problem was addressed — by policy, preferably. It’s important, especially given that online retail sales are soaring and retail e-commerce sales in India are likely to cross $5 billion this fiscal and expected to reach $17.5 billion in just about three years.

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