Recently, scams have been running rampant on e-commerce websites in India, be it the incident of a person receiving a bar soap instead of an iPhone or an old DVD drive in place of a CPU.
Another such scam has come to light via 91mobiles in which a customer who purchased a phone from Amazon received a notification from Flipkart that the device would be blocked due to non-payment. Let’s take a deeper look at the story to understand what happened.
A customer bought a Samsung S20+ via Amazon for ₹57,449 in Nov '20 (I've seen the invoice). Seller Divine India of Mumbai appears to have recycled a phone bought from Flipkart under its part-payment 'Smart Upgrade Plan'. Flipkart is now going to block the handset! https://t.co/tVYnk1MWFN
— PKR | প্রশান্ত | پرشانتو (@prasanto) November 16, 2021
According to Twitter user @JBhattacharji, she purchased the Samsung Galaxy S20+ from Amazon India. The smartphone was sold by seller Divine India on Amazon for Rs 57,449 ($775) in November 2020. Twelve months after the purchase, the customer is getting a prompt from Flipkart (another major e-commerce website in India) asking her to pay the remaining amount or upgrade the smartphone. The prompt warns the user that Flipkart will block the smartphone if the customer fails to pay the remaining amount.
After contacting Flipkart and Amazon, the customer was informed that the smartphone was initially bought from Flipkart under the Smart Upgrade Plan, which the seller later sold on Amazon. According to the customer, Flipkart has denied providing any support, while Amazon has made no comments on the issue so far.
Under the Smart Upgrade plan, Flipkart gives customers an option to pay the 70% of the smartphone’s value and pay the remaining 30% after 12 months of purchase if they intend to keep the smartphone. But, if you want to upgrade to a new smartphone, you need to return the smartphone and get a new one from Flipkart valued at more than the 30% amount of old smartphone. For example, let’s say a customer buys a smartphone for $1000. They only need to pay 70% of the price, i.e. $700. Then after 12 months, you get a choice to either return the smartphone and upgrade to some other model whose value is more than $300 (your remaining balance on the previous purchase) or you can pay the remaining $300 to Flipkart and keep your device.
The seller, Divine India, appears to have bought the phone off of Flipkart at 70% value and resold it on amazon for full value pocketing the difference. The customer who purchased this phone is getting a prompt from Flipkart that says she needs to pay the remaining Rs 15000 ($202) or upgrade to a phone that is worth more than Rs 15000 ($202) before November 21st under their Smart Upgrade plan or her device will be locked. In a later tweet, the customer said that Amazon had contacted her, clarifying that it was a scam and are looking into the matter.
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