'100 Evaly customers to get their money back on Jan 30'

Some 100 Evaly customers will get back their money on January 30, said AHM Shafiquzzaman, director general of the Directorate of National Consumers Right Protection (DNCRP), today.

"There are 6,500 complaints pending against Evaly. In the first phase, we have arranged to return the money of 100 customers," he said, without mentioning the amount of money.

Evaly has so far returned Tk 10 crore and now its CEO, Mohammad Rassel, will give a detailed plan of when and how the rest of the money will be returned, he added.

Shafiquzzaman was addressing a discussion on "Consumer Rights in E-Commerce and E-Services: What Should Be Done" organised by Bangladesh Mobile Phone Consumers' Association (BMPCA) at Dhaka Reporters Unity.

Evaly began its journey on December 16, 2018 through an advertising blitzkrieg and offering exorbitant discounts.

Customers later complained that it did not deliver products on taking advance payments of hundreds of crores of taka. Neither did it pay merchants who had initially supplied products.

Evaly claims it owes Tk 400 crore to its customers and merchants while law enforcers believe it is about Tk 1,000 crore.

Evaly's creditors are unlikely to get their money back as there is no documentation at the platform's end, making it difficult to verify who is owed what, found an audit into the company's books commissioned by a court-appointed board last year.

Rassel and his wife Shamima Nasrin, also a co-founder of Evaly, were arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion on September 16 in 2021 after a customer filed an embezzlement case against them with Gulshan Police Station.

Later, five other embezzlement cases were lodged against the couple with Dhanmondi Police Station and the court.

Nasrin was freed from jail on April 6 last year whereas Rassel from the Kashimpur prison on bail on December 18.

According to the BMPCA, 32 e-commerce companies which had carried out the advance payment-based fraudulence owed Tk 531 crore to their customers up until 2022. Then Tk 310 crore was returned in 2022 and another Tk 77 crore last year.

Of the companies, 18 have returned no money at all.

Talking about such scams by businesses online, the DNCRP DG said such companies should be brought back to business so that they could return the money.

"We will definitely give priority to the consumer's interest. For that purpose, we will support those institutions that have potential. The reason behind the support is to protect the interests of consumers," he said.

"One thing that should be clear here is that there is no hidden motive behind this," he added.

He said a cash on delivery system has been adopted for e-commerce products to prevent the scams.

"Now about 95 percent of the deliveries of e-commerce products are done on a cash on delivery basis," he said.

He also said the prime minister was scheduled to inaugurate a consumer complaint management system of the DNCRP on World Consumer Rights Day on March 15.

"We have already introduced a similar system in Dhaka through which we have received 23,000 complaints from consumers in the last eight months," he said.

Besides, they received 34,067 complaints against 49 e-commerce companies. Of them, 15,025 were settled, he added.

Rassel, BMPCA President Mohiuddin Ahmed, and e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh Vice President Mohammad Sahab Uddin also spoke.