There is some piece of bad news for Flipkart shoppers. Yes, you heard it right, from now, the price of products sold on the site would be 15 to 20 percent more expensive as compared to PayTm, Amazon and Snapdeal, its rivals.
Sad, isn’t it? Well, this is due to the 2nd phase of protest or #Online Dharna by eSeller Suraksha, a forum for merchants who sell their products on websites and apps.
Yes, this protest is with regards to the revised return charges and fee structure of Flipkart. Recently, Flipkart had reduced the return period on electronics, books and smartphones from 30 to 10 days. Talking about the commission that sellers have to pay to Flipkart, there has been an increase from 10 to 40 percent. Moreover, the e-commerce giant says that sellers would be responsible for paying shipping costs when it comes to returns.
Now in protest of these changes by Flipkart, eSeller Suraksha has asked its 1,574 members to bring about a rise in their product prices on Flipkart. Well, this is the 2nd phase of the protest. In the 1st phase, eSeller Suraksha had taken out a million stock keeping units from the e-commerce giant.
However, the president of eSeller Suraksha, Sanjay Thakur says that Flipkart remained unaffected even in spite of the protest. He says that “Flipkart told us that they were running in losses and now looking to establish a profitable business.”
Sellers had stated that the revision would have an adverse effect on their businesses and there were only 2 options, either to quit Flipkart and join somewhere else or either bring an increase in the product price. As per the calculations of eSeller Suraksha, there would be a 200-300 percent increase in fixed fee (Fee which is paid for each transaction). It further adds that returns would cost a seller somewhere around 108.9 to 197.45 for a product that costs Rs 600 and has shipping weight of 400 gms.
So what do you feel about this decision? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in our comments section below!