The union government has proposed some major changes to India’s Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020 that will impact major players like Amazon and Flipkart. If these strict norms are enforced, eCommerce platforms will be barred from holding flash sales and will have to undertake strict measures to curb preferential selling.
A flash sale will include the promotion of deep discounts and offers, and also of reduced prices for a certain period of time on select goods and services. Such flash sales are major traffic pullers for e-commerce platforms, especially during festive sales, and this restriction is bound to have a serious impact.
The new changes require e-commerce platforms to have ranking parameters that don’t discriminate against domestic goods and sellers. They will have to ensure that consumers aren’t misled by manipulated search results.
To comply with the new rules, every e-commerce platform in India will need to register Department for Promotion…