The All India Online Vendor Association, AIVOVA, has started a petition on change.org for a regulatory body for all eCommerce as a result of a lot of grievances received by them on their portal. IOS reports,

The petition states, “Even today, the marketplaces are openly violating these rules and there is no enforcement from government.”

“We require special tribunals to take up sellers’ issues the way consumer courts, electricity tribunals, debt recovery tribunals and others have been set up.”

Their complains state facts like

• Banks use to charge exorbitant interest on loans, minuscule interest on deposits, charge exorbitant transaction charges etc etc.

• Reserve Bank of India, formed through a statute of Central Government, changed this and created standards, regulations, monitoring bodies etc in order to creating a level playing field. And banks started getting rated on the basis of their service and relationship management.

• Another example, Insurance company send foot soldiers in the name of insurance agent instead of full time employees and asks you to take policy, pay premium on trust that in future they will compensate loss.

• What if, they would charge you 1 crores as premium for a policy of 1 lakh policy? And then force you to take such a policy in order to get your house/car etc registered with Municipal Corporation / RTO.

• Such a practice is not possible because of IRDA.

• What about your electricity company, it decides to charge 3x power charges from tomorrow onwards.

• What will you do? 1) Pay up? 2) Stop consuming electricity? what about money spent on appliances? 3) Start your own powerplant.

• CERC makes sure that electricity companies do not carry out such practices.

• It is because of TRAI that we have stopped paying incoming charges on mobile calls. That every person in the country is now trusting telecoms with a cellular connection to run their mobile phones.

• SEBI is the most known regulatory body.

WHAT DOES AIOVA PLAN ON ACHIEVING?

AIOVA is looking for fairness on the eCommerce trade space. The group is also aiming for seller empowerment, sustainable business and an ecosystem that is enriching for traders. Their petition demands for:

• Creation of a grievance cell
• A competitive market
• Prevention of monopoly and cartelisation
• Accounting and auditing standards
• Norms to prevent scams

Their reasons for signing are as follows :

It has been just a week and the petition has already garnered 269 of the required 500 signatures for it to be passed on to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.