Amazon & Flipkart to face legal proceedings for violating packaging norms

Both Amazon and Flipkart have been on a high since the success of their Diwali sales. But seems like the two forgot some legalities and regulations while luring customers with discounts and offers.

Maharashtra Govt’s Legal Metrology Organisation (LMO) has booked both the e-tailers for defying of packaged commodities rules after raiding their warehouses, where products worth over Rs 84 lakh were seized, for violating Package Commodity Rules, 2011.

Based on the consumer complaints, a special team was ordered to inspect warehouses of Flipkart and Amazon and after seven day long raids and inspections, at the premises of Flipkart’s primary seller Instacart and Amazon Sellers Services Pvt Ltd, the teams seized a total of eighteen types of packaged commodities worth Rs 37 lakh from Instacart, and twenty-one types of commodities worth Rs 47.7 lakh from Amazon Sellers.

According to Amitabh Gupta, controller of LMO, violations included MRP not being mentioned on goods, incorrect weight measure on the box, no declaration regarding name and address of the manufacturer/packer/importer, and price of the package, customer care number/e-mail address and manufacturing date not being mentioned.

Though, both InstaKart and Amazon Seller pleaded that they were merely supplying products as per the orders from respective platforms bringing in bills as evidence to convince the officials that all products stored in the Flipkart or Amazon warehouses belonged to the e-commerce giants but the LMO has already registered a case to be decided as per provisions of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, and Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011.