Snapdeal takes the minimum time to refund money and for a reverse pick-up, ahead of Flipkart and Amazon. Snapdeal takes 2.3 days to refund the money and 26.4 hours to pick up the item from the customer from the time the return request is initiated by the customer, according to a study by ChannelPlay.
In the last one year, Snapdeal has acquired four technology-led companies to beef up its logistics and bring efficiency in delivery. It currently has 63 warehouses across 25 cities that manage over 80% of its deliveries. Rajiv Mangla, chief technology officer and head of product at Snapdeal emphasised the importance of predictive analysis to track delivery.
Snapdeal was followed by Flipkart, which takes 2.9 days to refund the money and 31.2 hours to pick up the return. Excluding cases where Amazon does not provide reverse pick-up service to the shopper, the US-based ecommerce company was at the bottom of the deck as it takes 4.5 days to refund the money and 33.6 hours to pick the return from the time of the return request from the consumer.
Amid mounting losses and stressed balance sheets, Flipkart tweaked its no-questions-asked return policy to a 10-day return period from 30 days earlier.
The policy was implemented to save on the additional cost of reverse logistics.
The new return policy is applicable on leading categories such as electronics, books and mobile phones sold on Flipkart.
According to a recent study by Redseer Consulting, Flipkart was leading the industry gross merchandise value with a share of 35-37% followed by Snapdeal with 21-23% and Amazon with 17-19%, until the end of 2015.
In January-March 2016, the market share of Snapdeal eroded while Amazon gained and Flipkart remained stable, the report added.
The study was conducted across a sample size of 600 orders from Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon for the period of May-June 2016.
Refund, replacement and reverse pick-up was tracked by ChannelPlay across 20 cities and the orders were from three leading categories — electronics, apparels, and home décor.