Around 48 per cent of complaints filed on the National Consumer Helpline during January-August this year were against e-commerce entities as against a mere 8 per cent in 2019.
"There are huge number of complaints against e-commerce players," Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told reporters here.
The e-commerce sector had a 48 per cent share in total complaints registered on the National Consumer Helpline.
"This shows that e-commerce companies are not behaving well with the consumers," he said.
Singh said the department has held several rounds of discussions with e-commerce players and told them to have a standardized grievance redressal system.
The secretary informed me that all e-commerce players are at default, including big ones like Flipkart and Amazon.
Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) chief commissioner Nidhi Khare said the e-commerce sector contributed 8 per cent to the total complaints in 2019.
"So, it has jumped six-fold in the last three years," said Khare who is also an additional secretary in the department.
The National Consumer Helpline (NCH) has been set up by the Department of Consumer Affairs to receive complaints from consumers.
Singh said more than 650 companies, the latest being Lenovo, are connected to the helpline to address consumer complaints.
Khare said the department is pushing 90 more companies for agreeing to convergence with the Helpline.
The NCH is the alternate grievance redressal method and is a completely voluntary initiative taken up by these companies.
As part of this convergence program, NCH gives access to the individual convergence company to address these complaints as per the company's own internal grievance handling system.
Companies that have voluntarily partnered with NCH as part of the convergence program, directly respond to these complaints according to their redressal process and revert by providing feedback to the complainant on the portal directly.
Complaints regarding the companies which have not partnered with National Consumer Helpline are forwarded by NCH to the company for redressal.
