The government has received over 1,386 complaints through its National Consumer Helpline against e-commerce and direct selling companies till December 2016, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs C R Chaudhary informed Parliament on Tuesday.
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Among the leading e-tailers, the maximum complaints were received against e-bay (135), while Snapdeal (120), Amazon (114), Flipkart (92), whaaky.com (79), Shopclues (47) and Paytm (46) followed. Flipkart's arm Myntra had just two complaints filed against it.
Placing the details before in the Lok Sabha, Chaudhary said: "The received complaints were dealt with as per consumer grievance redressal procedure." He, however, made clear that there is no proposal to bring in a separate law to regulate e-commerce platforms.
A maximum of 449 complaints were against bookmyoffer.com. Simultaneously, around 15 complaints were received against Homeshop 18, followed by jabong.com (15), naaptol.com (13), Shop CJ Network India (10) and askmebazar.com (6) during this period.
Last month, a consumer study conducted by research firm Red Seer Consulting had ranked Flipkart as India's most trusted e-commerce brand for the fourth time in a row, above rivals Amazon and Snapdeal.
For the financial year ended March 31, 2016, Flipkart reported losses to the tune of Rs 5,223 crore, while Amazon came second with Rs 3,571 crore in losses and Snapdeal, which is run by Jasper Infotech, more than doubled its losses to Rs 2,960 crore. For 2014-15, the combined loss of the three largest e-commerce players stood at Rs 6,031 crore (Amazon: Rs 1,724 crore, Flipkart: Rs 2,979 crore, Snapdeal: Rs 1,328 crore).
The Consumer Protection Bill, 2015, already introduced in Parliament, seeks to provide setting up of a central consumer protection authority to look into, inter alia, unfair trade practices.
