E-commerce sites have made out life easier; you can shop anything while sitting at home in a few clicks. You can also purchase the products at the cheapest price and make the best use of festival sales, offers, and cashback. But there has been a huge disadvantage of shopping online and that is ending up with fake products; sometimes even on reliable sites like Flipkart and Amazon.
Both e-commerce giants were recently sent notices by Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for allegedly selling “spurious and adulterated†cosmetics. Moreover, the Delhi High Court recently ordered e-commerce companies to ensure that none of the products being sold online is fake/counterfeit.
The Delhi HC order came on a suit filed by women’s luxury shoe brand — Christian Louboutin — which claimed that e-commerce site Darveys.com was selling counterfeit products in their name.
A survey by LocalCircles showed that at least one in 5 people get cheated while shopping online. Moreover, there are particular categories which are more like to be fake.
The survey, in which 27,000 people participated from 200 plus districts, said that the highest number of fake products are from fragrances & perfumes and cosmetics category. A whopping 35% of people said that the highest number of fake products are from fragrances & perfumes and cosmetics category.
22% said that they received fake sporting goods, while 8% said they received fake bags in the name of the brand.
Moreover, the problem is, the survey showed, that a whopping 70% people said that they had no way of finding out if the product they bought online was fake or counterfeit.
“It is quite concerning in the sense that the number and percentage of counterfeits being shipped could be much higher if consumers knew how to identify a counterfeit product,†LocalCircles said.
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