Mumbai: This delivery came with plenty of growth, just not the kind the customer had ordered. A Mumbai consumer has been awarded Rs 2.14 lakh after a district consumer commission ruled against Flipkart and third-party seller International Value Retail for delivering beard growth oil instead of an iPhone 14 Pro.
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission directed Flipkart and the seller to refund the purchase amount along with interest, compensation for mental agony and litigation costs. The complaint against Apple India was dismissed, with the commission finding that the dispute related to non-delivery rather than any defect in the product.
The order was passed by consumer commission president Pradeep G. Kadu and member Gauri M. Kapse.
According to the complaint, Powai resident Anil Mutalik purchased an Apple iPhone 14 Pro (128 GB) from Flipkart on April 22, 2023, for Rs 1.11 lakh under a no-cost EMI scheme. He also ordered an Apple charger and a phone cover.
While the charger and phone cover were delivered as expected, the parcel meant to contain the iPhone allegedly contained beard growth oil and packing material when it arrived the following day.
Mutalik immediately reported the issue through Flipkart’s customer support and submitted photographs of the package and invoice. He continued to raise complaints on multiple occasions over the following month but said he neither received a replacement nor a refund.
According to the commission, Flipkart repeatedly marked the complaint as resolved without providing relief and later rejected it on the ground that valid identity proof had not been submitted within the stipulated 48-hour period.
In its order, the commission observed that Flipkart failed to adequately investigate the complaint or recover the wrongly delivered parcel.
“Failure to investigate the complaint, recover the wrongly delivered parcel, provide a replacement or refund and instead repeatedly close the complaint without granting any effective relief amounts to a clear cut deficiency in service and also constitutes an unfair trade practice,” the commission said.
The commission further held that Flipkart could not distance itself from the transaction simply because it operated as an intermediary.
“An e-commerce entity cannot simply distance itself from a transaction after facilitating the sale, particularly where the consumer immediately reports that a completely different product has been delivered,” the order stated.
It also found seller International Value Retail liable for failing to deliver the contracted product and for not addressing the customer’s grievance despite repeated requests.
Apple India, however, was cleared of liability. The commission ruled there was no evidence linking the company to the packaging, dispatch or delivery of the order, observing that merely manufacturing the product did not make it responsible when the handset itself was never delivered.
The ruling reinforces the responsibility of e-commerce platforms and sellers to ensure correct deliveries and effective grievance redressal, particularly when customers promptly report errors after receiving their orders.
