# Flipkart blacklists 40 sellers for malpractices



## Cyberghost (Oct 28, 2015)

NEW DELHI: In a move to improve the quality of its marketplace, Flipkart has blacklisted about 40 sellers, through its mystery shopping network of 60 employees, which was established this month.
"The identified sellers were selling either fake products, defaulting on deliveries or stocking out rivals by buying out and then returning their products," said Manish Maheshwari, VP and head of seller ecosystem at Flipkart. The company has 60,000 sellers on the platform, with Delhi constituting about 20,000 sellers alone followed by cities such as Surat, Bengaluru and Mumbai.
The company has designed computer algorithms to catch fraudulent sellers, who often inflate maximum retail prices and then give a discount. "Whenever a product image is uploaded with an inflated MRP, our inbuilt image search algorithms can detect whether MRP recorded in database with the uploaded MRP varies a lot. If it does, an alert is sounded against the seller," said Maheshwari.
In its recently concluded Big Billion Sale this month, Flipkart sold goods worth Rs 1,800 crore in five day sale, compared to Rs 600 crore worth of goods sold during last year's sale, which lasted only a day.
The company aims to achieve a bonafide base of 1-lakh sellers by December end. 

Besides selling fakes, online sellers have also started resorting to malpractices such as buying out rivals, or buying their own inventory online, in case they get cash back from websites. "We don't offer cashbacks. But we have seen some sellers stock out rivals by just ordering and then returning their goods," Maheshwari said.
Stocking out a rival seller will decrease its online rating. It may also help a spurious seller manipulate prices online by killing com petition for that product. Flipkart's first effort is to warn such sellers and then ban if they don't pay heed. "When an employee identifies to a fake product or nongenuine seller, he or she gets a cash award in the form of a voucher per identification," Maheshwari said, adding that about 60 people at Flipkart have signed up voluntarily for mystery shopping.

In recent past, buyers from websites such as Snapdeal, Flipkart, Paytm have pointed fake products being supplied by a few sellers. These products range from copied versions of branded headphones, shoes, cosmetics, bags, USB drives and watches. In a recent case, a Mumbai-based buyer from Flipkart received fake Lakme cosmetics, while a shopper from Paytm re ceived stone tiles in place of a Lenovo laptop in the shipment.
To control the menace, Flipkart has made it mandatory that only authorized resellers can sell branded goods such as appliances and electronics, to check grey-market pricing. "A laptop or mobile phone can only be sold by authorized resellers of that brand," Maheshwari added. "For sellers who do not comply with code of conduct and policies, we take measures, as needed, like penalties, impact on seller ratings and even delisting in certain extreme cases," said Vishal Chadha, senior VP market development at Snapdeal.

Source: TimesofIndia


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## topgear (Oct 29, 2015)

did FK reveal the name of the sellers / online shops ? If no then it's their another PR effort to gain trust in customers.


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## ankushv (Oct 29, 2015)

Flipkart should have a ' report seller ' button for us to click , if we receive a faulty product . Maybe it will solve some problems .


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## topgear (Oct 29, 2015)

But in such incident you can always contact flipkart CC.


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## kg11sgbg (Oct 29, 2015)

Kudos ! Flipkart for such move.
You should at least retain your trustworthiness.
In fact I have trust in Snapdeal and Amazon also.
Any issues arose,their CC(Customer Care) + ASS(After Sales Service) resolved the problem. Even if that had taken a couple of days more


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## Vyom (Oct 29, 2015)

If FK abandons the site, I would loose every bit of trust from FK.


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## Cyberghost (Oct 29, 2015)

And flipkart still allowing sellers like G2A to sell their product. Why Flipkart don't ban G2A Everybody knows they are shady cd-key selling site and their keys occasionally revoked by steam and uplay


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## REDHOTIRON2004 (Oct 30, 2015)

They did 600cr in one day previous year and did 1800cr business in 5days this year after they made the app thing mandatory.

This is something that they didn't mentioned in there so called sucessfull billion days this time.

It should have been atleast 2500cr-3000cr this time for 5 days.
Something tells me they are doomed.


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## Vyom (Oct 30, 2015)

REDHOTIRON2004 said:


> They did 600cr in one day previous year and did 1800cr business in 5days this year after they made the app thing mandatory.
> 
> This is something that they didn't mentioned in there so called sucessfull billion days this time.
> 
> ...



Well, good point there.
Flipkart indeed is hell bent to go the App only model. We already seen the way they are trying to enforce it. I myself had to purchase through app because of low prices on app. I used the app, even though I hate their decision of going app only, since at the end of the day I am a budget conscious consumer, and if the app let me save couple of hundreds I had to surrender. Though I am waiting for my items to arrive and after that I have a very pretty review to write about the app, accompanying with 1 star rating.

The IIT's that have been hired at Flipkart are trying very hard  analyzing the market. And hence the decision to buy Myntra and turn it into guinea pig, hence to lure customers to install apps. They are trying to access if they can survive with app only model and as long as their will be more ratio of people who would fall in the trap, app only model would succeed. And people like us, who know the perils of app only model, will only rant, and adjust with the changing times. We will turn to amazon and other portals.


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