E-commerce firms stick to MRP as offline stores charge extra: Survey

Bengaluru: E-commerce platforms have fared better than offline stores in complying with rules limiting sale of products to their maximum retail price (MRP) during the past five-week period when India has been in mandatory lockdown, according to a survey.

Conducted by community platform LocalCircles, the survey showed that 39% of respondents had at some point in the last five weeks of lockdown been charged more than the MRP of a packaged product bought from an offline store.

Only 21% of respondents said they had been charged more than the MRP for packaged products bought through e-commerce platforms in the same period.

A majority of complaints received by LocalCircles were of overcharging on products such as masks and hand sanitisers — both online and offline — in the first two weeks of the lockdown when there was high demand and lack of supply.