Earlier this year, brands such as Lenovo and Toshiba warned customers against purchasing their products from e-commerce sites such as Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon India. The companies in their advisories said that Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon India are not the authorised resellers of their products. Recently, Gionee also released a similar advisory, warning not to purchase their products from any online retailers.
In an interaction with Digit, a Snapdeal spokesperson said: “Snapdeal.com is an online marketplace where authorized sellers list their products on the platform. We take utmost care to list products only by those sellers who have the necessary authorization to sell these products. These authorized sellers already selling offline are the ones listed on our site and are selling Lenovo and Gionee products online through our platform. Customers can rest assured that all the products including Lenovo and Gionee products which are available on Snapdeal.com are genuine and eligible for warranty. Further, being an online marketplace, the pricing decision solely lies with the seller listing the product.”
Brands recently released advisories against buying products on e-commerce sites. How valid is their stand? How does it impact the e-commerce segment? What does the e-commerce industry think? And most importantly, what does it mean for users?
Personally, I do buy quite a lot from online retailers like Flipkart, Amazon etc. Never had to face a warranty issue, so can't say about that. Rest all was quite good.
Now proclamations like these by the brands do tend to induce a sense of fear, especially if you are going to buy a product which causes a huge hole in the pocket.
Source - E-Commerce vs. Brands: A serious conflict? | Digit.in
