Parul
In compliance of total lockdown of 21 days, country’s two e-commerce giants have temporarily suspended their operations. In the wake of spread of coronavirus, the companies are complying the government order’s to curb the disease.
Flipkart announcing the service suspension issued a company statement on its website saying, “Hello fellow Indians, we are temporarily suspending our services. Your needs have always been our priority, and our promise is that we will be back to serve you, as soon as possible,” the message displayed on website read.
The company has however promised that it will be resuming its services soon, although a date is yet to be announced.
“These are difficult times, times like no other. Never before, have communities stayed apart to stay safe! Never before, has being at home meant helping the nation! It added.
Meanwhile, clothing website Myntra, which is a part of the Flipkart group, has also announced that it is “temporarily not accepting any new orders”
Earlier to this, Amazon has also said that it was ‘prioritizing all resources’ to provide ‘high priority’ product. The company has stopped taking orders and is priortising the supply. It’s going to serve products which are of utmost importance such as packaged food, healthcare, personal safety, household things etc. This also means that we have to temporarily stop taking orders and disable shipments for lower-priority products.
“To serve our customers’ most urgent needs while also ensuring safety of our associates, we are priorising (with immediate effect) all our resources to serve products that are currently high priority. Stay safe!” a tweet shared by Country Head Amazon India and Global Vice President, Amit Agarwal read.
Amazon India further informs that for all pending customer orders on lower-priority products, customers have choice to cancel their orders, and receive a refund for prepaid items.
“These changes are in effect from 24th March 2020, and we will update when we resume normal operations. We will follow all Centre and State Government guidance on this. We continue to work with concerned government authorities to ensure on-ground support that will enable us to offer a more expanded selection to fulfill customer needs.” Said Amazon India.
“We recognize these are hard decisions that may impact some of our sellers’ business – we appreciate their understanding and continue to work for ways to enable small businesses to meet customer requirements during this time.” It added.
Meanwhile, the halted services have agonized customers. People are confused on the pending status of their orders and have taken their complaints to social media. Twitter is now full of such complaints. Customers are demanding an assurance of the shipments that has been stuck due to service suspensions, while others are demanding to resume the operations.
