E-commerce deliveries lag as companies struggle to fulfill earlier orders, high demand

Days after Delhi government agencies assured uninterrupted delivery of essential commodities, customers continued to complain that e-commerce websites were yet to

Days after Delhi government agencies assured uninterrupted delivery of essential commodities, customers continued to complain that e-commerce websites were yet to resume service.

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E-commerce websites, meanwhile, said they were catering to heavy demand, affecting their customers.

Delivery of essential items through e-commerce has been placed under the essential items list released by the ministry of home affairs hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown on March 24. Since then, however, there have been reports of many delivery agents being harassed by the police.

Many customers around the city said that even though online grocery services such as Big Basket, Grofers, FreshToHome, and other such services are claiming to operational, the reality is very different. When one logs on to these websites or their apps, a message appears that fresh orders were not being accepted because of “surge in demand” and “operational constraints”.

Arti Mehta, a resident of east Delhi’s IP Extension said that while she had stocked up on basic groceries before the 21-day lockdown was announced, she is now running short of vegetables and other perishables. She said she has been trying to place an order with Big Basket for the last two days to no avail.

“My order on Saturday was abruptly cancelled with a message that the authorities were not allowing delivery agents to deliver orders. I still cannot place any fresh order,” Mehta said.“If you want people to stay in, you will have to provide things. But limiting basic services, what option will a person have but to step out.”

In a notification issued by the central government on Wednesday, the first day of the lockdown, people were encouraged to call for home deliveries of essential commodities to ensure that people stay home and to make sure that retail stores are not crowded. However, on the first two days of the lockdown, many e-retailers had complained of facing problems on ground. On March 25, Delhi police officials met with representatives of these e-commerce companies to ensure smooth deliveries.

Big Basket spokespersons said that they were not accepting fresh orders to first cater to those customers who had already paid and placed orders.

“With the exceptionally high demand over the last few days, we are left with a huge backlog of orders. Our first priority will be towards customers who have paid and waiting for their orders to be fulfilled,” the company said in a statement. “We are witnessing a huge surge on our app and website traffic, which is causing our service to slow down occasionally. We are solving this by investing in additional servers and backend infrastructure.”

Grofers also claimed to be in service in the national capital. However, their mobile application was not allowing any orders till late Saturday evening.

“We are accepting orders in Delhi but there is a possibility of a longer delivery time because of the unprecedented number of orders that we are receiving and we are still working our way up to full operations capacity,” Grofers said in an official statement.

Meanwhile, vegetable retailers in the city said that after a shortage of certain vegetables and fruits, the supply has started arriving.

“I think the stage of panic is over and people are coming in at their own time to buy what they are short on without crowding the store. We are also ensuring that we provide home delivery to our customers. Many of our regular customer call us and we delivery their order to them,” said Subhash Mehta, owner of a supermarket chain in south Delhi.

The authorities asserted that all help was being given to the providers to retailers, including e-commerce sites so that people are not inconvenienced.

“The trouble might be from their end, we are doing all we can to ensure that the delivery agents carrying orders of essential products are not stopped anywhere,” said a senior Delhi police official.