Amazon Temporarily Suspends Taking Orders In India Following 21-Day Nationwide Lockdown

Joining scores of countries that have gone into a lockdown in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, India entered a 21-day nationwide lockdown, effective midnight March 25.

Following the development, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN said in a blog post it has temporarily suspended taking orders and disable shipments for lower-priority items.

The company said it would prioritize servicing its available fulfillment and logistics capacity to deliver critical products such as household staples, packaged food and other high priority products.

For the pending orders on lower-priority products, the company is providing customers an option to cancel the orders and receive a refund for prepaid items.

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"We recognize these are hard decisions that may impact some of our sellers' business - we appreciate their understanding and continue to work for ways to enable small businesses to meet customer requirements during this time," Amazon said.

Amazon informed its U.S. consumers last week it's experiencing delays running upto even a month in shipping to Prime customers in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Indian rival Flipkart, owned by Walmart Inc WMT, also announced it's temporarily suspending services, with a promise to be back soon.