All it takes is the click of a button, and any product you choose will arrive at your doorstep, thanks to the booming e-commerce industry. Buying is easy, especially electronic items. But the aftermath, when it comes to warranty, can be a tricky issue, due to factors like the lack of a bill and the warranty-card not being stamped.

A survey looking into the issues pertaining to online purchases by mysmartprice.com, a city-based price comparison platform, also gives an idea about what customers face when they go to service centres. It has been found that 54 per cent of people were denied warranty on products bought online when they approached service centres supported by offline retailers.

The survey was taken by 20,000 people, out of which 1.54 per cent or 300 people said that they faced problems with the products they purchased, and claimed warranty. “We had a lot of people asking us about warranty on the website, which receives 10 million hits a month. So we decided to conduct the survey,” said Sitakanta Ray, co-founder of mysmartprice.com.

Results of the survey found some acceptance with some citizens, who said that they indeed received faulty products which were bought online, and warranty was not applicable. “The earphones I had once purchased online stopped functioning a month later. The pair had two years of warranty, but when I went to a local dealer for replacement, I was told that it could not be done since I bought it online,” said Mannan Khan, a medical student. Other issues the survey found were that there was no seller-stamp on products or no seller-bill in online purchases at times.

Agreeing with the study was 29-year-old Asmita M., who did not get a warranty-card stamped by the seller, when she bought a new phone six months ago. “It had a minor problem, and the service centre refused to help me in spite of showing that I had bought it online and it was under warranty,” she said.

She had to wait for weeks before her phone was finally repaired.