Woman orders smartphone online, gets 4 soaps instead

Mumbai: Reshma Shetty, a city-based PR consultant, was in for a shock of her life when she received a pack of four soaps instead of the Moto G5 Plus mobile phone that she had ordered from the online shopping portal Amazon on Tuesday, for which she had paid Rs 14,999.

Responding to her complaint, Amazon told her to approach the local authorities and declined to give her any concession, after which she filed a complaint with the Bandra police. On Thursday, when The Asian Age contacted Amazon India’s team, it said that it would look into the complaint and then went on to resolve the issue by refunding the full amount to Ms Shetty within hours.

 Ms Shetty had ordered the phone on Saturday using her brother’s Amazon account. As per intimation by Amazon, the package arrived on Mon-day and was received by Ms Shetty’s mother at her residence.

Recalling the incident, Ms Shetty said, “I was in for a shock when she opened the package, only to find four packets of soap. On recovering, I immediately called on the number of the delivery man, who said that he had no knowledge of the contents of the package.”

Ms Shetty added, “Upon writing a formal complaint to Amazon and demanding a full refund, they replied saying that they would reply in three to five working days. But the very next day, Amazon replied stating that their investigation was completed and that the money could not be refunded. Instead they asked me to approach the local police authorities.”

Ms Shetty then lodged a complaint with the police on Wednesday evening, and named the delivery boy, Santosh, the store which shipped the product, Drashti Enterprises and Amazon for the fraud.

Pandit Nivrutti Thack-eray, senior police inspector of Bandra police station said the parties concerned would be questioned. Amazon’s PR team said that its was “looking into the matter”.  But within two hours, it contacted Shetty and asked her whether she would like the product delivered, or would want a full refund.

A spokesperson from Amazon India said, “As a customer-centric company, we take great care in the safe delivery of all our customer packages. We have investigated and resolved this case, and a refund is being processed. We regret the inconvenience experienced by the customer.”