Indore (Madhya Pradesh): It was an utterly, bitterly “wrong number” that the e-commerce application had apparently “dialled” so to say in this case. The consumer court on Tuesday ordered the leading App to pay back Rs 68,000 to the aggrieved customer.
A customer had ordered for a Samsung Galaxy mobile worth Rs 97,000 along with One Plus earbuds worth Rs 3,000 and had opted for the EMI scheme during a summer sale way back in 2021.
The complainant paid the initial amount of Rs 45,000 on March 28, 2021 and had been paying the EMI of Rs 5,000 for the next 11 months of the purchase. The tenure between the company and the complainant was supposed to end on February 28, 2022. However, the company kept on deducting the amount after the EMI was successfully paid. In the invoice presented by the complainant, there was a deduction of Rs 40,000 by the App.
The complainant immediately blocked the company’s right to deduct any further amount from his account and filed an inquiry for the same, to which the company never responded. After a month, the complainant wrote a letter of inquiry to the company’s head office, to which he got a response which stated, “Your initial payment was unsuccessful and hence the last transaction has been done as per the guidelines.”
The complainant sent a legal notice to the company to which they never responded. During the proceedings, the company’s representatives claimed that the guideline of the policy states that if the payment is unsuccessful at the initial phase, the company holds the right to deduct the money at the end month of the EMI.
The complainant submitted the original transactions from the bank and the details of payments done through net-banking. The consumer court ruled in favour of the complainant and the App was ordered to pay back the withdrawn amount of Rs 40,000, along with 8 per cent interest. The company also has to pay Rs 20,000 for the mental agony of the customer within a month of the judgment.
(To receive our E-paper on WhatsApp daily, please click here. To receive it on Telegram, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)
