Quikr — Quikr refuse to refund me

Address:

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EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION ON QUIKR

I was looking to buy a used phone on the online platform Quikr a while back. I got in touch with a seller, agreed on a purchase and made the subsequent payment.

As is on Quikr and for those not familiar, in order to ensure safe transaction, when the buyer makes a purchase the payment then enters into holding under Quikr. Quikr then sends OTP via email to the buyer, who, upon arrival and inspection of the product will then send the subsequent OTP to the seller. The seller will then draw the payment from Quikr.

Now, unfortunately on my purchase, the payment email went directly to the seller with no email sent to my end. Suspecting some technical or connectivity error I decided to wait for some time but upon receiving no email regarding the purchase, I suspected it was a failed gpay transaction and the amount would not be deducted from my account for the transaction. Thinking as such, I made another payment via net banking to the seller in order for a successful purchase, but upon the same thing happening again I decided to contact the site and look into the transaction.

It seems the seller received both payments directly along with the subsequent emails without any sort of notification to me thereby making me pay for a product twice. The seller in fact never sent me the product then or afterwards and he became out of contact soon after.

Quikr denied receiving payments after I contacted them, but fortunately I saved a screenshot of my payment page and after I sent them a copy they then told me they have already released the payment to the seller. The fact that Quikr failed to send me the OTP email and they send it directly to the seller is solely a transgression on their part, and they failed to acknowledge their error even after complaints were filed to them.

This might be a fresh type of scamming strategy or the Quikr website may not be secure enough so scammers can hack the transaction so as to direct the email straight to the seller. This unfortunate experience highlights the immense insecurity of online classifieds platforms such as Quikr and I would like to advise users to exercise extreme caution.