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You can add an ink tank to your inkjet printer using a CISS kit for less than 1000 bucks.

Here's one on Amazon.

Like Cloudtail is to Amazon, who is the 'inhouse' supplier on Flipkart

I think it's Appario and Retailnet.

Amazon: Appario Retail and Cloudtail
Flipkart: Retailnet and Omnitech Retail

Write off the printer as a loss and get a new inktank printer. That is your only long term solution.

The suggestion of other members of using a CISS ink tank kit to convert your inkjet to inktank is not a easy DIY. It is better done by professionals. Go to the area in your city where computer and IT parts and sold. There will be lot of printer repair shops. Check if they can convert the ink jet to ink tank. Get it done from them.

I am using my Canon All in One bought in 2012 without issues even today. Surprisingly, I replaced cartridge just once while I got them refilled thrice till now by spending mere 400 bucks and it has been working like charm. Have you tried visiting a local cartridge refiller? If not, give a try once.

I want to order a product on eBay.com and it is going to be shipped from Europe. This is the first time I am ordering through eBay and was apprehensive about the customs/import duties and how does it function. The value of the product is under 100$.

If it is shipped through the likes of DHL or FedEx, you will almost certainly be charged a duty of 30%. You will also have to pay a customs clearance fee to the courier company. Ask the seller not to under-invoice. The fine amount will almost be equal to the product value and the duty on top of it. If it is shipped through the local post and handled by India Post here, the duty will depend on your luck.

Ordered a set of H3 and P21 LED lamps, some small things for cycle - all from UK sellers. Everything has been delivered within 3 weeks (Chinese stuff has taken 2 months for me earlier), and all items came thru Royal Mail. Items were worth about $50~. Orders from Hongkong seller which I placed on the same day are yet to arrive.

+1. Even some eBay goods which were located in China, came to me via a nicely packaged box thru Delhivery and it was shipped from Haryana. I did pay $1 for shipping but that was worth it considering item was in China. Haven't seen something like this before but I am super glad. Took about 2 weeks. On the other hand free shipping items from that region are still arriving after 1.5 months.

Transaction Failed/Declined --- Money gone from account anyway.

Is it just me? Is it just Axis Bank? I have had this experience at least three times recently. An online transaction fails or is declined by the bank, for which exact reason is never given, only maybes. However, the money is debited from the bank anyway. Refund may come, if chased. But it may take days or weeks. Currently, Axis owes me about 11k for declined transactions from several days ago. Plainly, this is no small sum. For a start, it is far too much to attempt the same transaction again before it is refunded.

Is there anyone here with similar experience? What do you do about this?

Is there anyone here in the banking industry who can explain what is going on? How can a bank not pay, but debit the money anyway. What would happen if there were insufficient funds?

Axis bank has this money in a banking hole somewhere. It is not counting towards my minimum balance, which is a concern as the end of the month approaches, and not earning the small amount of interest paid on savings accounts. Is this why they do it?

Any comment/advice?

Sorry I can't be of much help with regards to solution but I can certainly confirm you are not alone. This has happened to me on handful of occasions...ICICI bank account + G-Pay/Phonepe. Transaction fails after a minute, the money still goes, does not reach the vendor, I pay in cash or return the goods and 2-3 days money is credited back to my account.

The first 2-3 times it happened I notified cust-care immediately to which their standard reply would be "it will be credited back in 2 days. If not, let us know". Thankfully I got money back on all the instances.

Another black hole is the ATM. My 20k were eaten by the machine. The dispenser flap never opened after counting the money and transaction just got cancelled, and money debited from account. Panic set in and I frantically called customer care to describe what just happened. It appears that it is way common phenomenon. Money was put back in the account in 10 minutes. But imagine, someone is in hurry or emergency for hospital and this happens.

Not from banking industry, but from e-commerce with enough experience integrating different payment systems. So with that caveat (and assuming this is not UPI):

The thing is, debit happens first. If the debit is successful, then the bank informs the merchant and finally, the merchant provisions the service / books the sale. The sort of problem you mention most often happens in the "bank informs the merchant" step. There are 2-3 different ways banks manage this step, each with its own failure modes. And when this step fails, merchant will inform you "transaction failed" but from the bank's perspective it has succeeded. The feedback/error correction loop here is via a reconciliation process. Banks will send a periodic (daily, usually) reconciliation report to the merchant and the merchant is expected to tally that with orders placed. And in cases where the reconciliation report mentions a successful transaction but merchant has not provisioned the order, the merchant is expected to either handle it via delayed provisioning or instruct the bank to refund the customer.

Since you are not getting the money back, my guess is that the merchant is dillydallying in the reconciliation process. They daren't do that with credit cards (because if you complain to the bank it becomes a chargeback and then they face hefty fines) but with netbanking etc. it is somewhat more prevalent. A written complaint, preferred through your local branch manager, will get some action from the bank and hopefully, will get your money back.

Edit: Decent e-commerce vendors will have automatic tickets raised whenever a transaction fails, and an assigned CRM representative - who has the tools at their disposal to check the bank's system for the actual status of the debit and if successful, override the site's conclusion and manually provision your order. With Amazon in fact, this whole process is automated.

Thank you very much for the information on the process.It really does sound as if it is designed to be weird, right from the "first thing is the debit." Especially if this fails at the bank end, with something like a wrongly-entered OTP for the payment.

In fact, my first experience of this, a few months ago, was with Amazon. They tried to be helpful, in a not-much-we-can-do way. They were able to give me a reference number to give the bank. It still took some time for the bank to make the refund.

Actually, I have received one of two refunds today. Sunday transaction, Wednesday refund: I suppose that is within the stated parameters, although this n-number-of-days thing seems to me to we fundamentally wrong when it should be instant!

This time I messaged our customer contact at the bank quickly. That, at least, cuts out the period during which one has not yet complained.
Cheers! I'd hate to have 20k eaten by an ATM. So far, those machines have always given me the cash.

A perspective from an Ecomm Administrator here. Most ecommerce sites have a payment gateway like CCavenue which collects the money on behalf of the merchant and sends a signal (token) to the ecommerce site that the payment has been successful. It doesn't know why the money was received - just the fact that the specified amount has been credited to it.
The merchant has about 11 days to accept the credit or reject. At the end of the period, if the merchant has not accepted the credit , the money is returned to the customer.
Sometimes, the payment gateway's token may not reach the merchant site and so the merchant site will not process the transaction as an order.

It is like the saying there is a slip between the cup and the lip.
In such cases, the wait period for the return of the money is as high as the 11 days. But you can contact the merchant and ask him to refund the money - a simple process that can result in your refund within one business day.
Big players like Amazon have their own payment gateway system and so there is smooth transaction overall. There is no 3rd party to shift the blame game.
Truth be said, 95 % of genuine online merchants would act fast and refund/allocate the money to the customer for their own credibility.

Thanks for further explanation. Fact is that this has never been a problem for me until recent months, when it has been so three times. Once with Amazon, once with a DTH recharge for someone else, and this latest, with RS Electronics, who may be a multinational, but I guess they are not huge in India and do use a payment gateway.

Before this, refunds were always prompt.