NEW DELHI—A post on Quora that is going viral today says that Flipkart and Amazon do not deliver in Noida because the "order abuse cases in these regions is higher that the rest of India."
An Amazon employee who wished to remain anonymous posted the answer to the Quora question, "Why do Flipkart and Amazon not deliver in Noida?"
The anonymous user, who claims to work with the risk investigation team with Amazon, said: "People used to order iPhone and mention they got a Nokia model phone."
According to the employee, Amazon would find bricks, biscuit packets and cardboard pieces when the customer would be asked to return their phones. "It's very easy to play fraud with Amazon and Flipkart," he writes.
The ordeal for Amazon employees do not end here. The employee says that Amazon's delivery boys were "locked up in the bathrooms and some beaten up" for the "silliest of reasons" such as not being able to give change or bringing the order late.
"These customers place the order just for fun using COD (cash on delivery), the courier boy goes for the delivery and they say we did not order," he said.
When asked about the issue, an Amazon India spokesperson told HuffPost, "We do continue to service Noida.”
We tried ordering from Amazon. The website says that a phone worth Rs 4,300 would be delivered to Noida in 7-10 days.
However, anything worth above Rs 5,000 cannot be delivered to Noida.
Amazon India refused to comment on why there is a limit on delivery in certain parts of the country.
Flipkart had decided to stop delivering goods to the state of Uttar Pradesh above Rs. 10,000, including the National Capital Regions of Ghaziabad and Noida in 2013.
However, when asked about the limit for delivery in Noida, Flipkart said it has been set by the government.
"Flipkart has a large base of happy and loyal customers in Uttar Pradesh. We deliver to multiple cities in the state, including Bareilly, Varanasi, Allahabad, Agra, Lucknow and Noida. We have two warehouses in the state- one in Dasna and another one newly opened in Dadri, providing a large selection of products in categories like mobile and mobile accessories, camera and camera accessories, books, footwear, computers and computer accessories and white goods. However, for any shipment sourced from outside the state, the government has set a limit of Rs. 5000/-, as per the commercial tax department. Our focus has always been to provide a seamless and unmatched shopping experience to the customers, while ensuring all compliance with the law of the land,” a spokesperson told HuffPost.
According to a report in Times of India, while Flipkart said the decision was "purely business oriented", insiders said there were numerous instances of customers ordering expensive goods on the cash on delivery scheme and refusing to accept their orders.
Following Flipkart's footsteps, the following year, Amazon decided to not deliver anything that is priced over Rs5,000 to postal codes from cities like Noida or Ghaziabad.
We wonder what UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav thinks about the reputation his state's cities are gaining.
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