Your rights when an online seller will not help
An online purchase that goes wrong raises a question the older consumer law never had to answer cleanly — when the consumer dealt with a platform but bought from a seller listed on it, who answers for the defective good, the platform or the seller? The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 set the frame with Section 94, which empowers the Central Government to prescribe measures to prevent unfair trade practices in e-commerce. The detail lives in the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, which split e-commerce entities into two kinds — the marketplace entity that only hosts other sellers, and the inventory entity that owns and sells its own stock — and fix different duties on each. The Rules require a grievance officer, time-bound redressal, country-of-origin disclosure and a bar on refusing refunds for defective goods; the marketplace entity's intermediary protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is made conditional on compliance. This guide sets out the two-entity scheme, the duties each owes, where the platform can and cannot shelter behind the seller, and the forum that hears the complaint.