This woman's Rs 70 lakh con forced Amazon to change its policies
- A woman from West Bengal bought expensive items and then 'returned' them
- The catch was that all the returns were duplicates or cheap knock offs.
- The con has forced Amazon to change its customer product return policy.
FollowAmazon has cracked down on a fraudulent online buyer, who returned the purchased items with fake replicas. Hennur police have identified the woman, who hails from West Bengal as the culprit and has remanded her in judicial custody.
According to the police, the woman bought 104 items worth Rs 69. 91 lakhs, including expensive products such as SLR cameras, high-end smartphones, TVs and other electronic gadgets. She would then place a request for returning it the next day and demanded a refund from the e-commerce company.
The woman, identified as Deepanwita Ghosh, used different addresses while returning the product. This went on for a year as the company didn’t have a policy of checking an item at the time of the return. An internal probe was carried out only after a seller found that original product was replaced with replicas.
The police also found that Ghosh operated as a seller called Rajarshi96 on another website. A police official said that Ghosh reportedly received customer orders for electronic products. She would then make the purchase on Amazon and direct the delivery to the customer’s address, reported Bangalore Mirror.
One police official added, “Once her customer received the product and Ghosh received cash for it, she would initiate a C-return with Amazon and receive a refund by returning lookalikes.”
This case prompted Amazon to change its customer return policy. Certain products like cell phones will be received only after verifying IMEI numbers. The company will accept other products after corroborating unique product codes and conducting a thorough inspection. The customer has to acknowledge and sign while returning expensive products, a warehouse executive said
