Online shopping and the amended E-Commerce Rules

Consumer law in India has had to keep pace with the way people now shop. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 allowed the Union Government to frame rules for online marketplaces, and the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 were made under it. In September 2026 the Department of Consumer Affairs amended those rules. The amended rules take effect on 1 January 2027.

The Government has presented the change as a balance. On one side is the shopper, who often cannot inspect goods, may not know who the seller is, and depends on the platform to show honest information. On the other side is the business, which the Government says should not carry needless regulatory burden. The scale of the problem explains the attention: of about 17.7 lakh grievances received by the National Consumer Helpline in 2025, roughly 29 per cent concerned e-commerce.

Several of the new duties are about honesty in what a buyer sees. A platform may not arrange search results in a way that misleads users or makes the results less relevant to what was searched. Paid placements, called sponsored listings, must be clearly marked as such. When a platform announces a discount, it must show both the reduced price and the earlier price, and the earlier price is defined as the lowest price at which the item was offered in the 30 days before the announcement. This stops a seller from inflating a price for a day and then advertising a large 'cut'.

Other duties concern the buyer's information and money. A marketplace must not use a consumer's information for specified purposes unless the consumer has given express and affirmative consent, and it may not collect bundled fees for services unrelated to the platform, except for loyalty or membership programmes. Marketplaces must show details such as best-before dates, return and refund terms, warranty and delivery information, and imported goods must carry the importer's details and the country of origin.

Finally, the rules address grievances and manipulative design. Every e-commerce entity must join the convergence process of the National Consumer Helpline, and must give a complainant a copy of the complaint as its grievance officer recorded it. Platforms must follow the 2023 guidelines on dark patterns — interface tricks that push users into choices they did not intend — carry out a self-audit every year and display a certificate of compliance prominently.