Online Exchange Scam: Recover Your Money or Order

One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.

Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.

TL;DR: An online exchange scam, where the seller takes the product back, keeps the money and then goes silent, is a deficiency in service under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. You can file a consumer complaint online against the seller before the District Consumer Commission and ask for a refund, a replacement or compensation. You don't need the seller's cooperation to file it, and you don't need to go to a police station first.

Rohit Kulkarni ordered a full-sleeve henley from a small online clothing label on 12 August 2025. It reached his flat in Indore a week later, and it sat tight across the shoulders. So he raised an exchange for one size bigger.

What came back was a half-sleeve. He hadn't photographed the original before couriering it, so there was nothing to show. The label took it back anyway and promised a fresh exchange. By then he had decided the smaller size actually fitted better, so he sent that one back too.

That was around early September. Nothing arrived. Support, which had earlier replied within a day, went quiet. Four emails and a marketplace help-chat complaint later, he had a tracking page that said "delivered" and no parcel on his table.

Everything above is his version of it, incidentally. The seller was never asked for theirs.

He came to the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao after those attempts went nowhere. A legal notice went out, and a consumer complaint was filed before the District Commission at Indore. The seller refunded the price along with costs before the first hearing. Advocate Sudhir Rao's handling of consumer procedure and e-commerce seller obligations is what shaped the notice and the pleadings, and it helped secure the relief in the client's favour.

Online Exchange Scam: How to Get Your Money Back

Short answer: file a consumer complaint before the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission where you live. The seller's silence is not a defence, and the fact that you couriered the goods back without photographing them does not sink the case on its own.

Key facts of the case

• Order placed with a small online clothing label in August 2025; delivered to an address in Indore about a week later.
• Size did not fit, so an exchange was raised for one size larger.
• The seller sent back a half-sleeve instead. The customer had not photographed the item before couriering it.
• The label accepted the return anyway and promised another exchange.
• By then the customer preferred the smaller size, and sent that garment back as well.
• Nothing arrived. Support, previously responsive within a day, stopped replying.
• Four emails and a marketplace help-chat complaint produced a tracking page marked "delivered" and no parcel.
• A legal notice was issued and a complaint filed before the District Commission at Indore.
• The seller refunded the price along with costs before the first hearing.

Two things are worth separating here. The story is one-sided — we have the buyer's account and nothing from the seller. The law, on the other hand, does not depend on the seller's version, because a complaint can be filed and decided without the opposite party cooperating at all.

What counts as an online exchange scam under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019?

On these facts, two concepts do the work.

Deficiency in service

Section 2(11) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 defines a "deficiency" as any shortcoming, inadequacy or imperfection in the quality, nature or manner of performance of a service that a trader is required to maintain. An exchange promise, once accepted, is part of the service the seller has agreed to provide. Taking the goods back and then not delivering the replacement is a failure to perform it.

Non-delivery of goods you have paid for has also been treated by consumer commissions as a deficiency, and it sits alongside the definition of a "defect" in goods under Section 2(10). Where a seller keeps both the money and the product, a commission is not going to spend much time on which label fits better.

Unfair trade practice

Section 2(47) covers practices adopted to promote the sale or supply of goods, including falsely representing that goods are of a particular standard or that a service is of a particular quality. A seller who advertises easy exchanges and then stops responding is on the wrong side of that line. So is a "no refunds" clause used to defeat a statutory right — a private return policy does not override the Act.

Where the E-Commerce Rules come in

The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, made under the 2019 Act, place duties on e-commerce entities and on sellers listed on a marketplace. Among them: displaying seller identity and contact details, appointing a grievance officer, acknowledging a consumer complaint within 48 hours, and redressing it within a month. Some of the fine detail of the Rules has been amended since 2020, so it is worth checking the current text for the exact obligation you are relying on. The point stands — a platform cannot shrug and say it only hosts listings if it has failed these duties.

Which commission do you file in, and what does it cost?

Pecuniary jurisdiction is set by value of the goods or services paid as consideration. After the 2021 amendment rules, the District Commission handles claims up to ₹50 lakh, the State Commission from ₹50 lakh to ₹2 crore, and the National Commission above ₹2 crore. A single garment order belongs in the District Commission by a wide margin.

Territorial jurisdiction is generous. Under Section 34(2), you can file where the opposite party works or carries on business, where the cause of action arose, or — this is the useful one — where you reside or personally work for gain. The buyer in the case above filed at Indore. You would file where you live.

Filing fees are small and scaled to the claim value under the Consumer Protection (Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions) Rules, 2020. You are not required to engage a lawyer; Section 35 allows a consumer to file and argue personally. In practice, sellers and platforms turn up with counsel, and the drafting is where complaints usually lose ground rather than at the hearing.

Limitation: the deadline that actually matters

Section 69 gives you two years from the date the cause of action arose. The cause of action here arose when the promised exchange failed and the seller went silent — call it late 2025 on these facts. Two years sounds comfortable. It is not, because the evidence you need decays much faster than that: chat threads get deleted, email accounts go dormant, courier tracking pages expire.

If you are outside two years, a commission can still entertain the complaint if you satisfy it that there was sufficient cause for the delay. That is a discretionary relief, not a right. Do not build a plan around it.

How to file a consumer complaint against an online seller

Step 1 — Build the record before you do anything else

Take screenshots now, not later. Capture the product page as it stood when you ordered, the order confirmation, the payment receipt, the full chat or email thread, the courier receipts for the returned parcels, and the tracking page. Save them as PDFs and keep them in one folder. Emails are stronger than screenshots of chat windows because the header shows who sent what and when; export them if you can.

Step 2 — Send a written notice

A legal notice is not mandatory before filing, but it changes the shape of the case. It fixes the date on which you asked for a refund, it creates a written demand, and it tells the seller that you know what forum exists. Give a clear deadline — fifteen days is normal — and state the exact relief: refund of the price, or replacement, plus costs. Send it to both the seller and, if the platform facilitated the sale, to the platform's grievance officer.

Step 3 — Draft and file the complaint

Complaints can be filed electronically through the e-Daakhil portal against commissions that are on it, or physically at the commission's filing counter. The complaint needs the parties, the facts in chronological order, the deficiency or unfair trade practice you are alleging, the relief claimed, and a list of documents. A short affidavit and the supporting documents go with it.

Before litigation, the National Consumer Helpline is worth a try. Complaints lodged there are taken up with the company, and a surprising number of sellers settle once a government portal is in the loop. It costs nothing and takes an hour. It does not extend your limitation period, though, so do not park the matter there for months.

Step 4 — The hearing

Under Section 38, the commission is directed to endeavour to decide a complaint within three months of the opposite party receiving notice where no analysis or testing of goods is required, and within five months where it is. Those are directions, not guarantees, and listed matters do get adjourned. The commission can also pass interim orders, and it can proceed against a seller who does not appear.

In the case above, the seller refunded the price and costs before the first hearing. That is not unusual in small e-commerce matters once a complaint is actually filed and served. Filing itself is often the whole remedy.

What relief can you ask for?

Under Section 39, the commission can order:

• Replacement of the goods with a conforming product;
• Refund of the price paid;
• Compensation for the loss or injury suffered, including mental agony and inconvenience, assessed in a reasoned way;
• Litigation costs;
• Interest, where the facts support it.

Claim what you can actually prove. A court or commission will not award a large sum for mental agony on a ₹1,200 shirt unless you explain, in two or three lines, what the loss actually cost you — the repeated couriers, the hours spent chasing support, the money sitting with the seller. Vague and inflated claims are the fastest way to lose credibility on the part that matters.

Can you also file a police complaint?

Sometimes. The distinction is intention at the time of sale. If the seller genuinely tried to fulfil the order and the exchange collapsed through incompetence, that is a civil dispute, and police will usually say so. If the seller took your money knowing there was no intention of delivering — a fake label, a pattern of identical complaints, a website that vanishes — that is cheating under Section 318 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and in some fact patterns criminal breach of trust under Section 316.

You can lodge a written complaint at the police station, and if no FIR is registered you can apply to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) of the BNSS, 2023. For online frauds, the national cybercrime portal is another route. Be aware that police routinely treat pure non-delivery-without-fraud as a commercial matter and push you towards the consumer commission. Filing both is possible; running both simultaneously without a clear fraud element tends to help neither.

If you paid by card or UPI

Ask your bank about a chargeback for goods or services not received. Card network rules provide for it, though the window is short — often a fixed number of days from the transaction or the expected delivery date — and the bank will want the same document trail described above. For UPI, a chargeback is much harder. Either way, a chargeback is a parallel remedy and not a substitute for a consumer complaint, particularly if you also want compensation and costs.

Where the case is weak, honestly

A few things can genuinely hurt a claim like this.

• No proof of what you returned. Not photographing the item before couriering it is a real gap. It is not fatal — the courier receipt, the weight on the docket, and the seller's own written acceptance of the return all help — but it weakens you if the seller later claims you sent something else.
• Your own conduct. Here, the buyer sent the goods back a second time after already having a live exchange request. That needs explaining. It is explainable, but it has to be addressed in the complaint, not ignored.
• An anonymous seller. If the label is not a registered entity and the platform has not displayed its details, enforcement becomes difficult even after you win. A refund order against a person who cannot be found is a piece of paper. This is one reason platform duties under the E-Commerce Rules matter so much.
• Recovering a small sum. Execution proceedings after an award cost time. For very small claims, the honest advice is often to weigh the effort against the money.

On the facts described here, a refund claim was strong. That is not the same as saying every exchange dispute has a remedy worth pursuing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What to send us if you are in this position

Write to the chamber with three things: the order confirmation or invoice, a two-line note of what happened and when the seller stopped responding, and the dates of any returns you couriered. If you have a legal notice already, send that too. Everything else — the chat thread, the tracking page, the emails — can follow once we have the dates, because the dates decide whether you are inside the two-year window under Section 69 and which commission has jurisdiction.

You can reach us through /contact-us or request a consultation at /book. One caution before you do: if the seller is unidentifiable and the sum involved is small, there may be very little worth arguing about, and we will tell you that plainly rather than take a fee for a complaint that cannot be executed.

This article is general information about Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Consumer law and e-commerce rules change, and outcomes turn on facts that a short article cannot capture. Please obtain advice specific to your case before acting.

Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India