Flipkart and Amazon India have temporarily suspended operations after the Centre announced complete lockdown for 21 days.
New Delhi| India’s two of the top e-commerce platforms Flipkart and Amazon India have temporarily suspended operations after the Centre announced complete lockdown for 21 days.
Amazon India has said they have stopped taking any new orders and are prioritising supplying customers with essential goods. Amazon India has said they will prioritise to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as household staples, packaged food, healthcare, hygiene, personal safety and other high priority products.
With stores closed and roads locked down in many parts of the country, many people turned to e-commerce firms such as Amazon, Big Basket, Flipkart, and Grofers to get essential supplies like vegetables and other food items delivered home — only to find that the online platforms weren’t able to make deliveries either.
With the lockdown that is in place since Sunday to curb the spread of Novel Coronavirus (officially called SARS-CoV-2 or which was earlier known as 2019-nCoV), many people say they’re facing difficulties, but most stores like Amazon are showing out of stock or unable to complete deliveries.
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State authorities had said that essential goods such as food, pharmaceutical and medical equipment, and groceries all would be an exception and would be available to the public even through e-commerce sites in a normal manner. However, customers are facing issues in getting even food items delivered to their addresses.
Platforms like Amazon, Grofers, and Big Basket have all been showing products as out of stock or undeliverable. Similarly, apps such as Prime Now and SPAR are also showing unavailability of delivery slots across various regions in the country. An Amazon customer service associate said that they are facing a lot of difficulty with normal deliveries, and are working to resolve this urgently.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday announced a nationwide lockdown in an address to the country. He urged people to stay indoors and said that people should not be mistaken that isolation is only for the sick, it is for the healthy too. PM Modi added that India would bear the financial outcome of the lockdown.
The government has said all essential services will continue to be available despite the lockdown. However, all public transport facilities and other measures have been suspended.
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