The All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) has written to Samsung India’s Managing Director Ken Kang yet again alleging preferential treatment to e-commerce firms such as Amazon and Flipkart. In a letter addressed to Kang, AIMRA alleged that Samsung was preferentially supplying Samsung Galaxy F62 and other smartphone models to e-commerce platforms. These are letters written to Samsung on behalf of the association’s Karnataka, Odisha and Delhi & NCR chapters.

Writing to Samsung, AIMRA has alleged that the smartphone maker is offering certain new models only to e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart and is offering different pricing for offline and online retailers. This, it wrote, is “a great setback not only to the already ailing retail industry, and customer too is getting confused and losing on service experience.”

AIMRA has also asked Samsung to refrain from diverting customers from offline stores to its own portal. “Already mobile retailers are going through the toughest time of their trade with thousands of shops closed and many more on verge of closure. You are also well aware of the fact that even Diwali has been Black Diwali for retailers only because of preferential treatment of e-commerce companies leading to shifting of customers from Mainline (offline) to Online. With mobile retailers already under burden of non-availability of stocks, unreasonable targets, the price difference between online and mainline market, other online offers like instant cashback, bundle offers etc, how do you think the retail to survive??” AIMRA wrote.

It has asked Samsung to ensure ‘same time, same model, same supplies’ to offline and online retailers.

However, this is not the first time AIMRA has reached out to Samsung. It has written to the smartphone maker several times in the past. In September 2020, it accused Samsung India of misusing customer data of offline retailers and luring their customers to shop online by directly contacting customers who bought the S series or Note series phones from offline stores and encouraging them to shop on Samsung.com through messages and emails.

In February 2020, it even boycotted Samsung for three days over its tie-up with Amazon Pay.

In its letter on Sunday, AIMRA has alleged that the issues of offline smartphone retailers have not been resolved despite reaching out to Samsung several times. AIMRA, on behalf of offline mobile retailers, has been pushing to end exclusive partnerships between smartphone makers and e-commerce platforms.

In fact, these exclusive partnerships also came under the scanner of the Competition Commission of India in January 2020. The regulator launched an antitrust probe into Amazon and Flipkart following a complaint filed by the Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh where it said that the exclusive arrangements between phone brands and e-commerce companies and select sellers needed to be investigated along with the allegation of linkages between preferred sellers and e-commerce players.

However, the probe has been challenged by Amazon and Flipkart. Both platforms moved Karnataka High Court seeking to quash the CCI probe, and have been embroiled in a legal battle ever since.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)