Exclusive: Online sellers claim payment delay, product de-listing as Amazon, Flipkart resume delivery of non-essentials

Battered and bruised with zero or reduced sale during the country-wide lockdown in the last two months, multiple online sellers are now complaining of delayed payments by US-based e-tailer Amazon.

The Amazon India Sellers page on social networking site Facebook is filled with posts from sellers claiming lack of payments since the last two weeks. Many of them are small-scale sellers who are also finding it difficult to sustain the business cycle with this backlog for long.

The issue happens within a month after the government allowed e-commerce companies to sell non-essential items on their platforms across select zones.

According to one of the affected sellers, Amazon has changed its payments policy after May 15.

"Earlier the payment came after the shipment of the product. However, now it will come only after the product is delivered," the seller who runs his business from Rajasthan told Moneycontrol, requesting anonymity.

This brings a lot of uncertainty since the deliveries of many products are delayed these days because of the on -ground restrictions around COVID- 19 in the country.

Running a business has become all the more difficult for smaller sellers who depend on their weekly payments.

"Many of them are facing liquidity crunch and are unable to pick new orders from their dealers for selling," he said, adding that on an average now the delivery of products are getting delayed by 3-6 days across categories.

On its Facebook page, the company has stated that the "funds are available for transfer to your (seller's) bank account, seven days after the estimated delivery date or actual delivery date, whichever is earlier."

Expressing his discontent, Sanket Vaghani, a seller, posted on Facebook how this issue was impacting businesses. According to him, earlier the business stopped in March. When the business restarted, the orders were less. When the orders picked up, the payment has been stopped.

Confirming a change in the policy, Amazon India spokesperson told Moneycontrol that now the sellers will be entitled to a daily payment instead of once-a-week schedule; however, the same will happen after the delivery of the product and not after the shipment, like earlier.

“We fully recognise that these are difficult times for our selling partners. Hence, to help them manage their working capital and cash flow better, we have enabled on-demand payment disbursement for our seller partners. With this new capability, sellers are now able to get payments daily (once in 24 hours) against a fixed weekly payment cycle," the spokesperson said.

"We listened to a lot of feedback from our seller partners and understood that a large number of them wanted the option of getting funds disbursed when they want and not receive payments once a week. This change makes funds from the sales that seller partners make available for transfer seven days after the estimated delivery date of an order or actual delivery date, whichever is earlier," she added.

Even as this happened, sellers across both Amazon and Flipkart also claimed that their products were getting delisted from the marketplaces.

Requesting anonymity, two Flipkart sellers Moneycontrol spoke to said that their products had been delisted in the last one week. One of the sellers said that the company has assured him that the same was happening because of logistical issues and will be taken care of shortly. However, according to him, these are difficult days and even a day without business means huge losses for a small company like his.

Meanwhile, Rohit Devika, another Amazon seller, also posted on the e-tailer’s seller page the issue pertaining to missing listings. "My listings have been made inactive by Amazon and there has been no notification," the seller said.

Acknowledging the issue, a Flipkart spokesperson told Moneycontrol: “As the external environment continues to change rapidly, we’re working in full compliance with local authorities and state governments to help consumers receive their products at the doorstep, as they practise social distancing. In order to do so, we are prioritising the needs of the consumers and increasing our serviceability across all regions which may lead to certain seller listings being subject to these changes. As the country enters into Unlock 1.0 phase and the restrictions around curfew timings ease, we will be able to further ramp up our capacities and work with lakhs of our local seller partners and MSMEs to ensure that their customers are serviced in the best manner."