Cancellation and refunds policy

With Pay on Pickup, nothing is charged online. You owe the shop the full amount at the counter, so a cancellation involves no money and there is nothing to refund.

With Reserve, you pay a small advance online when ordering. The advance is a percentage of your cart total, subject to a minimum and a maximum, plus a flat platform fee; the balance is paid to the shop at pickup. The exact figures are itemised on the payment screen before you pay, and stay visible in the order details afterwards.

Only these two options are currently offered. Every refund described below is made to the original payment method — we cannot redirect a refund to a different account, card or UPI ID.

You can cancel from the Orders screen at any time before the shop marks your order ready for pickup. That covers the placed, accepted and preparing stages.

Once the order is marked ready for pickup, the app no longer offers self-service cancellation, because the shop has already picked and set aside your items. You can still raise the matter through Help & Support or with the shop directly, and a refund remains possible on review — see below.

A completed order cannot be cancelled. Concerns about goods you have already collected are handled as a return or quality complaint rather than a cancellation.

Where you paid an advance, it is refunded automatically, less a cancellation charge of 2.5% of the amount you paid online. That charge covers what the payment gateway keeps on the original transaction, together with the GST charged on its fee — neither is returned to us when a payment is reversed, so neither can be returned to you.

Where the amount you paid online was ₹1 or less, it is not refunded. At that level the unrecoverable fees account for most of the payment, and an advance that costs nothing to abandon does not do the job an advance exists to do.

The exact amount refunded is shown in your order details. The refund is initiated immediately on cancellation — you do not need to contact us or make a request for it to happen.

This charge applies only when you choose to cancel. If the shop cancels, or if we do, you are refunded in full — see below.

At this point the shop has picked, packed and is holding stock it did not sell to anyone else, which is precisely what the advance exists to compensate. The advance is therefore not returned automatically. The order is placed in a review queue and a member of our team decides the outcome on the facts.

A refund is issued on review where the circumstances warrant it — for example if the shop was closed when you arrived, the items were not as described, or the order could not be collected through no fault of yours. A refund approved on review is subject to the same 2.5% cancellation charge described above, for the same reason. Where the advance is retained in full, the retained amount compensates the shop for stock it held for you.

We aim to decide a review within 5 working days of the cancellation and to tell you the outcome and the reason for it. If you disagree with the decision, you can escalate it to our grievance officer using the details on our Contact page.

Where a shop declines or cancels your order — because stock ran out, it is closing, or it cannot fulfil the order for any other reason — you are refunded in full, automatically, no matter what stage the order had reached. No cancellation charge is deducted and no minimum applies: the review process and the 2.5% charge described above never apply to a shop-side cancellation, because you did nothing wrong.

The same applies where we cancel an order ourselves, for example because a shop has been suspended.

If you begin an online payment and do not complete it, the order stays unpaid and is never sent to the shop. Unpaid orders are cancelled automatically a short time after being placed, currently 15 minutes, and the items are released.

If money left your account but the order still shows as unpaid, do not pay a second time. Contact us with the order number and the payment reference. Banks and UPI apps occasionally confirm a payment to us late; where a payment is confirmed after the order was cancelled, the amount is refunded to the original payment method in full, with no cancellation charge — you received nothing for it.

Because a Pay-on-Pickup order costs you nothing upfront, the ability to place one rests on trust. Each Pay-on-Pickup order you cancel uses one of a limited lifetime allowance, shown in the app.

When the allowance is exhausted, Pay on Pickup stops being offered to you, and you can continue ordering by reserving with an advance instead. The allowance does not replenish automatically. If you believe it was consumed unfairly — for instance by cancellations caused by shops rather than by you — contact us and we can restore it.

Cancelling a Reserve order never consumes this allowance. Forgoing an advance and losing a credit for the same act would penalise you twice for it.

Because you collect in person, please check your items at the counter before leaving. Anything wrong, missing or visibly damaged is quickest to resolve on the spot with the shop, which is the seller and holds the stock.

If you discover a problem after leaving, raise it through Help & Support with your order number, a description, and a photograph where relevant, ideally within 48 hours of collection. We will take it up with the shop on your behalf and coordinate a replacement, a return, or a refund of the affected items as appropriate.

Perishable goods, and items used, opened or altered after collection, cannot normally be returned once they have left the shop, except where they were faulty, misdescribed or unfit at the point of collection. Nothing in this paragraph limits your rights under Indian consumer law.

We initiate every approved refund with our payment provider within 24 hours of approval, and in the automatic cases described above, immediately.

Once initiated, the money is returned by your bank or UPI provider to the original payment method, normally within 5 to 7 working days. That final leg is controlled by your bank, not by us. The refund status is shown in your order details throughout.

If an approved refund has not reached you after 7 working days, contact us with your order number. We will trace it with our payment provider and stay with it until it is resolved.

Use Help & Support in the app, or the details on our Contact page, for anything about a cancellation, a refund or a charge. Always include your order number. We aim to acknowledge within 48 hours and to resolve within a reasonable time.

If our answer does not resolve the matter, ask for it to be escalated to our grievance officer, whose details appear on our Contact page. This policy does not limit any right available to you under Indian consumer law.