How new rules are set to change your online shopping experience - The Indian Express

When adding an item at “60% discount” to your online shopping cart, have you wondered if the original price is actually what the website shows? Or have you had to scroll endlessly because the search results that showed up first were too expensive or did not match your query exactly? The government has now come up with rules to curb some of these practices.

The Department of Consumer Affairs has amended the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 to strengthen “consumer protection while facilitating a transparent and balanced regulatory framework for the e-commerce sector”, according to a release by the Press Information Bureau (PIB). The new rules will come into force on January 1, 2027.

Here are the nine key changes and what they mean for consumers.

The amended rules say that whenever a price reduction is announced, platforms must display both the reduced price and the “prior price”. The PIB release specifies that the prior price will mean the “lowest price at which the product or service was offered during the 30 days preceding the announcement.”

This is aimed at making discounts easier to assess. At present, a product may be shown as, say, “50 per cent off” against a high reference price, without a shopper necessarily knowing whether it was actually sold at that price recently.

The amended rules prohibit e-commerce entities from manipulating search results in a way that misleads users or adversely affects the relevance of results to their search query.

This matters because search ranking determines what shoppers see first. A platform may have many products matching a search, but the order in which they appear can influence what gets clicked and bought. A platform can choose to show a more expensive product, or one from an in-house manufacturer, rather than one that best matches the user’s query at the lowest price.

Paid or sponsored listings will have to be identified through “clear and prominent disclosures”, according to the PIB.

In practical terms, consumers should be able to distinguish between a product appearing because it is a relevant search result and one appearing because a seller or brand has paid for its placement. The change addresses a familiar problem in online shopping: advertising that can look like an ordinary recommendation or search result.

E-commerce entities will have to comply with the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, conduct a self-audit every year and prominently display a certificate of compliance.

Dark patterns are design techniques that manipulate users into making choices they did not necessarily intend to make. The 2023 guidelines cover practices such as false urgency, adding unwanted items during checkout (“basket sneaking”), making cancellation unnecessarily difficult, disguising advertisements and hiding important information.

The new rules therefore do not create the concept of dark patterns from scratch; rather, they bring compliance with the existing 2023 guidelines more explicitly into the e-commerce rules.

Annexure-1 of The Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, have a list of specified dark patterns. These are false urgency; basket sneaking; confirm shaming; forced action; subscription trap; interface interference; bait and switch; drip pricing; disguise advertisement; nagging; trick question; Saas billing; and rogue malwares. To learn more about these dark patterns, read our explainer here.

Every e-commerce entity will have to provide a complainant with a copy of the complaint as recorded by its grievance officer.

This is meant to give consumers a clearer record of what exactly they complained about and what the platform has formally recorded.

Every e-commerce entity will have to become a partner in the convergence process of the National Consumer Helpline (NCH). The government says this will integrate online platforms more closely with the national consumer grievance-redressal mechanism.

The government cited the scale of complaints as one reason for strengthening this mechanism: in 2025, the NCH received 17,71,622 grievances, of which 5,11,196 — about 29 per cent — related to e-commerce.

Marketplace platforms will have to provide important information to help consumers make informed decisions, including best-before/use-before dates, return and refund terms, warranty, delivery and payment details.

The rules say marketplace e-commerce entities cannot collect bundled fees for services unrelated to the e-commerce platform, except under the specified provision for loyalty or membership programmes.

The idea is to prevent consumers from being charged for unrelated services as part of an online transaction unless the charge falls within the specified exception. For example, if you buy shoes worth Rs 1,000, the platform can’t charge you an extra Rs 50 for “account protection” or some other service you did not ask for.

For imported goods, platforms will also have to disclose the name and details of the importer and the country of origin.

Marketplace e-commerce entities will not be allowed to use consumer information for specified purposes without the consumer’s “express and affirmative consent”, according to the PIB.

The provision is particularly relevant where a marketplace and sellers associated with it may have access to information generated by consumers’ activity on the platform. The rules place a clearer limit on using such information for certain commercial purposes without the consumer actively agreeing to it.

Taken together, the changes seek to make online shopping more transparent at several points: when a consumer searches for a product, sees its price and discount, decides whether a listing is an advertisement, checks who is selling it, makes a purchase, or files a complaint afterwards.