Deceived e-commerce customers getting refunds

Customers who were deceived by several e-commerce companies during the previous Awami League-led government are getting refunds as the present interim government has taken an initiative in this regard. So far, Tk410.69 crore has been paid.

Some e-commerce companies that were accused of customer fraud and the heads of the payment gateways have already been instructed to take quick action in this regard.

The instruction came from a recent meeting of the Central Digital Commerce Cell of the Ministry of Commerce with its head Joint Secretary Mohammed Daudul Islam in the chair at the Secretariat.

According to the sources, a list of how much money has been refunded to the defrauded customers by any such company was placed in the meeting. As per the list, a total of 15 companies have refunded Tk410.69 crore to customers against 67,382 orders. Of this, Qcoom Limited has returned Tk330.42 crore, Alesha Mart refunded Tk40.67 crore, Dalalplus Tk19.12 crore while EvalyTk14.92 crore.

In the meeting, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of e-commerce company Evaly Md Russell said, Evaly would continue the process of refunding the deprived customers by doing business.

Ripon Mia, managing director of Qcoom Limited, said that all the money stuck in the Escrow system has been returned to the customers by Qcoom Limited. He claimed that some amount currently stuck with Foster Corporation Limited is obtainable by Qcoom Limited which is not being paid.

In response, Foster Corporation Limited Managing Director Bahadur Khan said that his company only deal with Qcoom Limited. The company now has only Tk42 crore due after clearing payments of Tk394 crore.

Placing more detailed information about the transaction with Qcoom Limited,he said due to lack of necessary cooperation from Qcoom Limited, it was not possible to return the customer's money from Foster Corporation in a short time.

In the meeting, the point of contact of Dalalplus Hasnain Khurshed said that the server of Dalalplus cannot be made operational as the owners of Dalalplus is in jail. As a result, the required customer list cannot be made. In this case, if detailed transaction information is provided from shurjoPay payment gateway, it will be possible to prepare the customer list after checking it.

At this time, Touhidur Rahman, manager of shurjoPay payment gateway, said that the transaction details of the amount of Dalalplus money stuck in the gateway of his organization will be provided soon.

E-orange's legal representative told the meeting that there are complications with the ownership of E-orange. Apart from this, Sonia Mahjabeen, owner of the company, and her husband Masukur Rahman were charge sheeted in a money laundering case. It will be possible to return the withheld money to the customers if their names are deleted from the charge sheet and their ownership is returned.

Alesha Mart's lawyer also said that the company's chairman is currently in jail, so he is unable to sign anything directly. However, he wants to file a list with the payment gateway SSL Commerce to return the outstanding amount of Tk2.74 crore.

The information presented at the meeting also indicated that Aldin's Pradip is interested in returning the money owed to customers from its freezed bank account. Apart from this, Sirajganj Shop has shown interest in returning the customer's money but has not taken any initiative so far.

According to the relevant sources, all the e-commerce and payment gateway companies were asked to refund the money to the customers quickly by setting a one-week deadline to solve the complications in their respective cases.

The meeting informed that the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection has filed numerous complaints against various digital commerce companies. Due to lack of manpower and non-cooperation of digital commerce organizations, these complaints cannot be resolved.

In view of this, the authorities concerned has asked to assign 20 people to Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) and 10 people to e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB) to dispose of customer complaints pending with the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection.

It has also been decided to issue media notices advising customers who have paid but have not received products from various e-commerce companies to file a complaint with the National Consumer Rights Council within the stipulated date and publishing the list of digital commerce companies whose money has been withheld with payment gateways and banks.