You won’t be able to return these products on Flipkart. Here’s the list

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India’s largest online marketplace Flipkart has tightened its return policy and from now on you won’t be able to return few of the products available on the e-commerce site.
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Flipkart, which may lose customers due to return policy, wants to cut operational costs.

It will no longer offer refunds on products such as mobile accessories, personal care appliances, computer and camera accessories, office equipment, and game and smart wearables.

Flipkart won’t even return mobile phones, large appliances and furniture.

Company’s website stated the refunds are not offered. All sales are final for these categories.

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Flipkart has always been viewed as liberal e-commerce player but this move might impact traffic.

"Flipkart's new refund policy... can be best described as penny wise and pound foolish. This may temporarily reduce the burn rate, but will alienate customers in the long term,” an ecommerce industry executive who tracks Flipkart told ET.

"Our customers can request for refunds through the self-service option on over 1,150 product categories of the 1,800 available, which constitutes about two-thirds of all the categories on Flipkart. In fact, Flipkart processes about 25,000 refunds on a daily basis, 60% of which are instant, where customers don't have to wait to get their money back,” Flipkart’s spokesperson told ET.

A larger window of 30 days is open for exchange of products in select categories such as clothing, footwear, eyewear and fashion accessories.

"This is all about reducing cost of operations and making every sale a final. There is a huge cost attached to return of any product and also in reprocessing or repackaging it for another sale. This is very similar to offline retail where the cost of return is on the customer,” Devangshu Dutta, chief executive at Third Eyesight, a consulting firm focused on retail, told ET.

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