Online-based e-commerce companies have to deliver products to the customers within five days of receiving the advance payment.
If the product order is received from within the same city a maximum of five days and if the order is placed from another city or village product must be delivered within 10 days of advance payment against the order.
The guidlines were proposed in a draft e-commerce guideline (awaiting finalization) at an interministerial meeting held at the commerce ministry on Thursday. The final draft will be sent to the cabinet for approval and the government will issue a notification later.
At present, based on a lot of allegations against some e-commerce organizations including Evaly that after receiving advance payment of products they took a lot of time to deliver the products to the customers even they said to deliver those within 45 days.
However, the guideline state, e-commerce platforms will place ordered goods to different types of delivery services within 48 hours of receiving advance payments and send notification to customers via SMS, email or phone call. Delivery service organisatons will be responsible for delivering the products to the client’s address within 72 hours.
In the proposed guideline it is also said that, if e-commerce platforms are unable to deliver the goods, products, and services within 72 hours they should not take more than 10 percent advance payment. However, they will be able to take 100 percent advance payment through the central bank’s ESCROW gateway.
If any order is consisted of several goods, there will be uniform delivery charges. However, if the ordered product comes from different vendors, separate delivery charges may be applied. This should be informed to customers before confirming.
If a company fails to comply with the guidelines, the government can take various measures, including revoking the trade license, revoking the company’s registration, and cancelling the VAT registration.
The draft policy states that if an e-commerce company fails to deliver products on time, customers must be repaid the advance within a maximum of seven days. If there is an additional charge, it will be on the company, not the customer.
