Flipkart’s ‘Secret Agents’ Report Fraud Sellers; Etailer Takes Action Against 500 Defaulters & Blacklists 250

As part of its ongoing ‘mystery shopping’ initiative, ecommerce giant Flipkart has blacklisted 250 of its sellers after they were found selling products of inferior quality, reported ET.  

The etailer assigned over 300 of its employees and staff of a leading consultancy firm to act as ‘secret agents’ and weed out the sellers who were selling substandard products. While shopping on Flipkart, these agents would identify the substandard goods and report it to the Flipkart security team by sending the picture of the item to a specific email ID.

“So far, we have received feedback for over 600 sellers through this initiative for which investigation has been done. We have taken necessary action against close to 500 sellers during the course of this program,” Sachin Kotangle, Sr Director, Flipkart, told Inc42. The company currently has about 85,000 sellers on its platform. 

“With rising customer concerns around fake and counterfeit products online, we launched Flipkart mystery shopping programme in October 2015. Our main focus has been to ensure best quality, uniformity and fidelity of all the products delivered to customers. Through initiatives like these we are looking at setting a benchmark for seller and product quality on our platform – ensuring a clean buying and seller environment for both sellers and customers,” he added.

He said that Flipkart employees can volunteer to act as secret agents to identify fraudulent sellers on its platform. The company has also partnered with one of the big 4 consulting firms for external support.

This is not the first time that Flipkart is blacklisting its seller. Last year, in October, Flipkart had blacklisted about 40 sellers through its mystery shopping network of 60 employees which was initiated that very month.

Other ecommerce players are also facing trouble with fraud sellers on their platforms. Last year, Paytm delisted 3000 of its sellers across 50 categories due to seller malpractices.

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