Due to health concerns, the e-commerce website Flipkart and Amazon has decided to temporarily suspend their services in India. On Tuesday, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a complete lockdown in the country so as to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Resultant to this order, Flipkart issued a statement via a blog post suspending their services for a period of 21 days however all other services such as video streaming, payment, recharges, online games, etc will still remain accessible via Flipkart app.
The blog post says, “Consequent to the order issued on March 24 by the Ministry of Home Affairs announcing a 21-day lockdown across India to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19, we are temporarily suspending our services.” It further says, “Your needs have always been our priority, and our promise is that we will be back to serve you as soon as possible. We urge you to stay at home to be safe.” This means the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant will not take any orders during the 21-day lockdown.
In the meantime, its biggest competitor Amazon has decided to temporarily stop taking orders and also disabled shipments for lower-priority products to ensure safety. According to the company from now onwards the company is going to only take high priority products orders such as households, healthcare, hygiene products, etc. The changes will be effective from March 24th and will be updated when the company resumes normal operations.
The company said, “To serve our customers’ most urgent needs while also ensuring the safety of our employees, we are temporarily prioritizing our available fulfillment and logistics capacity to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as Household Staples, Packaged Food, Health Care, Hygiene, Personal safety and other high priority products.”
Pending orders which are on low priority can be canceled and the users who have already made payments will also receive a refund.
It further added, “Amazon and our network of partners are helping communities around the world and in India to deliver much-needed supplies directly to the doorsteps of people who need them. We will remain focused on providing this vital service to people in India, especially to those most vulnerable, like the elderly or those without access.”
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