Bengaluru, Dec. 15 -- A few months ago, Rupali Singh, a sales professional in Gurugram, placed a routine order for some staples on e-commerce platform CityMall. She was aware that the deliveries were sometimes late, but that was tolerable as long as the prices were good. On that day, however, no one showed up.

A week later, Singh noticed the order had been marked cancelled, allegedly because she had failed to answer calls from the delivery partner. But no one had called, and when she tried the phone number listed on the app for clarity, no one picked up. After raising a ticket, she received the number of a senior employee for her area. He admitted frankly that she was not at fault-the delivery partner assigned to her wasn't even in the s...