Sellers cry out to Nirmala Sitharama on Snapdeal's missing stock, discrepancies in shipping

In a second letter to the Minister of Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman, the All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA) has complained about issues with e-commerce major Snapdeal.

A total of nine complaints were made by 14 sellers in Hyderabad.

“We got crystal clear evidences for each and very incident like phone recordings, cc tv footage, mails, scanned docs, videos, Photos. All 14 sellers based in Hyderabad collected from last 14 months,” AIOVA said.

The letter to Sitharaman labelled the online marketplace of making ‘one-sided policies’ and absence of ‘prudent systems leading to unjustified financial losses.’

A Snapdeal spokesperson told Times of India that all business dealings with sellers were conducted within the framework of signed contracts with ‘clearly defined scope of work, charges and payment terms.

The excerpts of the complaints written to Sitharaman by the sellers have been listed as follows.

1. Many policies and process are changing without proper updates for its benefits.

2. After shipping the product Snapdeal cancels our orders, then they are charging ‘out of stock penalty’ by saying we did not ship the product. Here the main point is as per the Snapadeal terms, if in any, case if we failed to ship the product then Snapdeal will charge 250% of the marketing fee as a penalty but here after shipping the product also Snapdeal charges out of stock penalty of 700%- 800% of marketing fee.

3.  Snapdeal returns come in damaged condition all our products worth Rs 30000-40000. 
Snapdeal returns the product in useless not re-sellable condition then are providing ‘max damage compensation’ of Rs 7000 then they take back Rs 2000 for return logistic charges from that Rs 7000. 

4. Seller support team directly rejected all our claims without providing any proper resolutions by giving reasons i) As per our policy this case got rejected ii) Our QC team rejected the case we cannot help iii) Max tickets trust hold reached so we are closing all your tickets.

5. Without returning the product Snapdeal updates status as returned, then they are deducting the payment without our notice.

6. For any damaged resolution Seller Support provides damage reimbursement and time period when we will get the respective payment, unfortunately that won’t happen, we have a list of suborders where we are waiting from 2015 for which we did not receive payment. 

7. As we all know for long appliance category transport charges will be +15%, we have 12-14% return in this category. Here as per the Snapdeal policy for appliances customer cannot return the product. Only replacement is given to the customer in case of valid proof, but still we are getting 14% returns.

8.In a SD+ model lot of our stock (value in corers) missing we are requesting clarity on the missing stock even they do not know where exactly our stock is even though they are working on this from last 6 months. We are requesting them to return our stock or to release the payment they are not responding.

9. Snapdeal collects thousands of rupees for us to produce damage free packing for our product, neither they product packing nor they return the product with our damage, for what cause they are collecting special packing charges.

Zeebiz emailed Snapdeal regarding the complaints and the story will be updated with their comments once received.

In its first letter to the Ministry on February 23 AIOVA claimed about Rs 300-400 crore could be stuck with Snapdeal as troubles grow within the company and fears of cash running out spread.

“We request your intervention to regularise our industry whose growth will lead to growth in collection of taxes, generating employment, interstate commerce, building logistic infrastructure and many more benefits at a fast pace,” AIOVA said.