An Incident from Seller hub

Adesh Kumar Mishra
2 min readOct 4, 2021

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A few years back, I used to sell merchandise on leading E-commerce stores like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc.
I remember a discussion that was going on Flipkart seller hub. There was a merchant who was discussing a conversation that he had with his friend.
That friend used to order many times a week but for the sake of fun. As the deliveryman use to arrive with the order, he used to cancel the order beforehand. Sometimes he deliberately provided the wrong address with cash on delivery orders so that packet would mark as RTO.
When the seller talked with him, his friend told him that he did this purposefully. He enjoys ordering and cancelling orders. As he thinks it is ok to trouble the seller or the delivery personnel.
Once, we packed a set of three perfumes for delivery, after few days when the order came back due to customer cancellation. We found an empty shampoo bottle inside. To our despair, we had to bear the delivery charges for both sides apart from the fraud.
Each year, millions of parcels are marked as Return to Origin due to several reasons. Some cancellations are genuine, not all. Many of us think it is a business problem or structural problem. It is a behavioural issue like sanitation. When someone enjoys seeing others being troubled or worried, you can not solve it by improving the delivery services or trying legal means.
E-Commerce giants can spend millions in marketing their products. Can create a consumeristic mindset. Why can’t they push the concept of ethical buying? It can create enabling atmosphere by making one aware of the pain of others.

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