Punishing senior citizens? Flipkart, Shopsy stop Cash on Delivery in Ahmedabad!

The other day, someone close to me attempted to order some goodies on Flipkart and its subsidiary Shopsy. After preparing a long list of items, this person, as usual, opted for the Cash on Delivery (popularly known as COD) option, as this senior citizen isn't very familiar with online prepaid payment methods like UPI, credit or debit cards, or online bank transfers through websites.

In fact, she is hesitant to make online payments, fearing, "I may make a mistake," she explained, adding, "I read a lot about online frauds, so I always choose COD as it's safe. I have no knowledge of how to prepay online."

She has a valid concern. Many senior citizens in Ahmedabad, where I live, wish to shop online but refrain due to the fear of fraud, which seems imaginary to me but very real to them. "What if the item I purchased online with an advance payment is delivered to someone else?" one of them questioned. I observed this individual struggling with online shopping apps to order necessities, as age limits his and his wife's ability to venture out.

Upon discovering that Flipkart and Shopsy were refusing COD for online shopping, I attempted to use this option myself on the Flipkart and Shopsy apps—but to my surprise, I was also refused COD! Thinking it might be a locality-specific issue, I contacted their helpline, where I was informed the restriction was indeed area-related.

However, the helpline could not confirm whether this was temporary. I decided to try a different address in Ahmedabad—a posh locality in the Ellisbridge area where a relative resides. I thought that since my locality is a lower-middle class and middle-class area, COD might have been discontinued there, but surely it would be available in Ellisbridge. However, I was mistaken—COD was refused even in Ellisbridge!

Curious about the situation, I did some research to understand the change. We’ve frequently used COD on Flipkart and Shopsy before, so why the sudden restriction? I discovered that Flipkart hasn’t entirely discontinued COD; rather, it's unavailable in certain areas due to logistical challenges, security concerns, or courier partner policies. For high-value orders, Flipkart has restricted COD to prepaid options for quite some time.

Further investigation revealed that Flipkart and Shopsy are not exceptions in this matter. ShopClues has entirely stopped COD due to security and delivery efficiency concerns, as have Fynd, Paytm Mall, and Shopify India (which is "ending support for advanced COD apps for merchants"). Even Amazon India, the most popular online store, "sometimes disables COD for select areas or high-value orders." Similarly, Snapdeal "imposes caps or disables COD during certain periods."

This raises the question: Isn’t stopping COD compelling senior citizens to use prepaid options, which they are reluctant to adopt? And doesn’t this limit the business potential of online shops? I don't know the answer.

Meanwhile, I recall speaking to a senior citizen couple who have been living in the US for several decades. During my visit to their residence in New Jersey last year, the husband, in his late 60s, shared an experience about renewing his driving license. "I went to the office and told the person there that I am not familiar with computers, so I can’t book an appointment online. What options do I have?" he recounted. "The reply was prompt: No worries. We will handle it right away. My license was renewed after the official filled in all my details on the computer, while I provided the necessary documents and doctor's certificate."

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog