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-   -   Flipkart and the "order put on hold" menace (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/268078-flipkart-order-put-hold-menace.html)

Hi All

I am mostly an amazon guy and very rarely use Flipkart (as in once a year for mobiles alone). I am forced to buy on Flipkart for mobiles mainly due to the exclusivity agreements for Google phones.

But until now, the experience has been sans any issues with Flipkart. My last purchase was in 2022 for a phone for the wife. On Amazon I am very regularly (atleast weekly) and never had an issue.

This week I had an interesting problem with Flipkart and their policies. Wanted to know if anyone else has faced this.

So, few days back, I placed on order for a Google pixel (latest model) phone + a back cover and paid for the entire transaction using my HDFC card. The order went through and payment was deducted from my card.

1. The orders page showed order successfully placed at 9:11PM.

2. Within a minute I refreshed and noticed that the status now shows "Order put on hold". This was a surprise and I didnt understand what the problem was.

3. Immediately went to HDFC site to check if the amount was deducted and in deed the transaction was successful. No issues there I had also received an SMS on the same from HDFC.

4. Now, I went to the help center on the FlipKart App and negotiated with the BOT to let me talk to a human. Finally there was a call back after 15 minutes. I explained the problem and in the middle of my sentence the lady disconnected the call.

5. Back to the BOT and after swearing allegiance to them in the future, another call back was arranged. This time I was able to explain the full problem. But the kind soul on the other end said - "Sir, I understand your concern, but your order is put on hold. Flip kart will check and revert after 24 hours".

Me - "Is there a problem in my payment?"

FK Customer Care - "Let me check. (after few minutes). No sir, we have received your payment".

Me - "So then what is the problem"

FK CC - "Dont worry sir, we will update you after 24 hours".

Me - "What does after 24 hours mean? Is it 1 year or 1 week".

FK CC - "Sir, rest assured you will get an update after 24 hours".

Me - "But you promised delivery within 24 hours. Now you are saying I will get an update on the order after 24 hours. Will I get the phone at all".

FK CC - "The order can be confirmed or rejected after 24 hours".

Me - "Can I cancel the order now?"

FK CC - "No sir, cancel option is removed for your order now. We are verifying some things in the back end".

Me - "What are you verifying? "

FK CC - "Sir rest assured we will respond after 24 hours".

Me - "What happens if you reject".

FK CC - "We will credit back the amount in 8 working days as standard".

Me - "Just doesnt make any sense".

FK CC - "Sir, rest assured..." . I disconnected.

So basically, they had taken my payment. Acknowledge on the call that the payment went through successfully. But are verifying something on their side.

On top this, I cannot cancel the order. And if they reject the order for any reason I will get my money back in 8 working days. I believe they send someone walking with the money from Delhi to Bangalore to my bank branch to credit the amount. May be its their policy, who am I to complain about it.

I was at my wits end. I have connections in some right places to get this fixed quickly, but did not want to disturb them for unnecessary issues. So a few seconds on Google later, it was clear that this is not an isolated incident.

In fact there are too many complaints on Youtube and hundreds of comments on these videos mentioning they have faced the same issue mainly with high value transactions. Some even speculated that Flipkart is taking orders over the available inventory and holding on to the customers payments.

And lot of comments about Flipkart not responding on put on hold orders and not refunding as well.

Not sure, what exactly is going on. But does not seem ethical.

But, I was able to contact the right people and within an hour my order status changed from "put on hold" to "confirmed". I had no other option. But I am yet to get an explanation on what exactly happened in the backend.

I am trying my best, not to call this a fraud. But it is very close. So buyers beware.

The representative of Flipkart are no different from bots. I had ordered a gaming laptop from them back in early 2021. While I do not remember the specifics, the order was supposed to be delivered in a reasonable time frame. After a day or two of placing the order, the laptop had reached Pune well before the scheduled delivery date and I was elated by the prospect of an early delivery.

However, for some reason, the laptop was in Pune for the next 4 days and even on the day on which it was supposed to be delivered. I raised a query at 5 PM on the supposed delivery day and was able to connect to an agent. While I do not remember the exact words, the gist of the response was pretty much the same as yours- 'Be assured, we are working on your delivery and your item shall be delivered by 9PM'. Heck, even at 7:30 PM, they were using the exact same words. The agents at Flipkart are powerless, at least before an actual delay takes place. Since you know some people in Flipkart, is it possible for you to ask them about this? I think that this is an internal policy of theirs.


In hindsight though, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It was an impulse buy and I am still using my old laptop with plans to upgrade later this year. :D

Flipkart really need to improve their game if they want to compete with Amazon.

I had ordered a trimmer in last year's sale. They showed the order as ready to be shipped for 1 month (Yes, 1 month) and later cancelled it. I had to buy after the sale without any discounts :( Numerous chats and calls with customer care were as ridiculous and useless as they can be.

Last week, I ordered grocery and the payment from my axis CC was deducted, but the order was showing as pending payment confirmation. When I called up customer care, luckily they updated the status to paid and order placed. I'm hoping that they will deliver the order.

On the other hand, Amazon is generally quite good, but seems they are learning from Flipkart. I had ordered some cosmetic from Amazon 4 days back and was supposed to be delivered today. But, today I got the message that the item could not be delivered and is being returned to seller. Its the same address where a lot of orders have been delivered earlier :Frustrati

When I returned to India a couple of years back, I continued to use Amazon.in since I was used to their exemplary service in the US. Just once I decided to get my young cousin a pair headphones costing a few 1000 bucks and saw an offer on Flipkart for my bank. Went ahead and paid but the order never went through and money got deducted. Had a very rude shock when I called them expecting a simple refund. Instead kept being given the run around. Never got the money or the headphones. A stark contrast to Amazon where I would be given back the money first followed by questions later. Needless to say, since then I haven’t even looked at Flipkart irrespective of how great a deal they may have. In the meanwhile have used Amazon for buying everything from toothpastes to a Macbook Air. Flipkart lost out on making atleast 10 times the amount they ripped me off of. But this seems to be a common issue across sectors here where corporations are regularly penny wise and pound foolish. Their loss in a country with an ever growing middle class. @OP if it is a cc payment, raise a dispute and get back your money and turn your back on these crooks for ever like I did.

The best thing about amazon atleast on my experience is, they issue the refund within a day and ask for feedback or questions later. And I believe they have an algorithm to monitor customer characteristics/behavior and readily refund/return for the genuine customers. Never have I observed a case of order not confirmed when payment was successful.

But with flipkart, somehow I feel they are taking in more orders than they have inventory for and using the "order on hold" trick to hold on to the cash. Hope this is not a pointer to some cash flow issues with them. Who knows.

Could this be related to your shopping pattern? You were a new/unknown user for Flipkart, and started off with a high value purchase with CC (maybe UPI would have gone differently)?

Could be any number of things at this point really. But, I would not attribute this to a “scam”. Aren’t they backed by Walmart now? So shouldn’t really have a cashflow problem.

From what I have seen, Amazon does this “on-hold” stuff too - https://us.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...nYkNjxdOL3GTah

With Amazon, I feel it is purely a case of economics. They refund amounts upto a threshold (no idea what this threshold is) no questions asked as that’s probably cheaper than keeping a person on roll to talk to customers. Above the threshold, they might be doing things differently.

The best thing to do is go for “Cash on delivery”, so even if there’s some issues at least one can console himself that the money is still in their pocket and not under the mercy of some chat bots.

I reached out to Amazon CC and was told that the order was being returned since the package was damaged during transit. The price of the item is now reduced by Rs.10 :Cheering:and I have placed another order. I hope they deliver this time.


A positive experience with flipkart as well, I had ordered an item and had to cancel it after shipping. They refunded the amount immediately without waiting for the item to reach back to them. Credit where its due.

I also had bad experience with flipkart. I ordered a beige item but black colour was delivered. I asked for return/replacement. Pickup guy refused to take it because it was not beige.

To be honest, I have lost trust in these e-commerce companies. Either I am unlucky to face many strange issues, or these companies have no loyalty towards their customers.

I experienced this yesterday:

My Amazon Fire Stick abruptly ceased functioning. I have tried every possible troubleshooting step before calling customer care. Now, when I called them and explained the whole issue and whatever I had tried, the CC guy told me that your device has some issues, and you need to return it.

I asked, How?

So the process is that I need to buy a new Amazon Fire Stick, and once I receive it, I will have to call back the customer care guy. Then they will send some guy to pick it up, but I have to make sure that I return the old fire stick (the corrupted one) in the “new box”. Once this entire process is done, they will refund the amount to my “Amazon account”.

There are so many loopholes in this entire process, which I am not going to talk about, but I need to have a 4K in order to return this product. Seriously?

I was doubtful about following this return process and had many dilemmas. So what did I do? I have done everything but check the adapter. This time I used the different adapter, and bang, it was working fine. But the process to change the adapter is also the same, as it came in the same box with the fire stick. The same adapter costs around ₹1290 on Amazon, but I have to live with it.

The outcome is that no one is sane; people are simply fortunate to not be experiencing the problems associated with these e-commerce sites.

FYI - My FK account is about 14 years old. I am not a regular on FK, and most of my purchases on FK are for mobiles that cost more than 30k atleast.

Just being owned by Walmart does not mean they cannot have a cash flow problem. But I am not sure if it is a cash flow problem either.

It looks more like a policy of taking more orders than they have inventory.

Two days after seeing your post, I've ended up in the same situation. I made an order for an MSI laptop only for it to be put on hold. My account is over a decade old and this is not the most expensive thing I've purchased on Flipkart. I checked the card and the transaction did go through. I'm now waiting for their call back.

Any pointers on whom to contact to get it resolved?

My usage of flipkart has been similar to yours, Flipkart for mobiles due to it not being listed at the same prices in Amazon.

If you are now not too keen on getting the item. You can raise a dispute with the card provider as well and ask for the transaction to be reversed (attaching a communication of the suspended state of the order).

Sorry to hear. Hope you have already contacted the customer care via a call back. If not, please do so and understand what exactly is the problem. Check with them if they got the credit of the funds. This question they will answer.

Check with them if they have the product in stock. For this one - they did not provide a straight answer to me.

Raise hell with them.

A quick update on the order. It was finally confirmed at 1 AM today, 13 hours after it was placed. The delivery date haven't changed. But I'll be keeping an eye on it.

I wanted to wait 24 hours before raising a dispute. The main issue is that IMHO Flipkart simply has a better catalogue of electronics compared to Amazon. That MSI Ryzen Combo in the form factor I like is not available in Amazon. Moreover Amazon doesn't support exchange of laptop in not working condition unlike Flipkart.

Well, the requested call back never came. I had to raise a ticket through chat option. I didn't get any direct answer to the questions I asked. The ticket still remain as unresolved. So I doubt whether the order now being confirmed has anything to do with the complaint.