From 1 January 2027, India's e-commerce platforms must show you the real reference price behind every discount, label every paid listing, and stop using your data to sell you their own brands without asking. The rules notified in September are the largest revision of the sector's rulebook since 2020.
The Department of Consumer Affairs notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026 on 9 September, by gazette notification G.S.R. 789(E). They amend the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, made under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and take effect on 1 January 2027.
The Inflated Discount, Addressed Directly
The most visible change concerns how discounts are shown. A platform that displays a reduced price must now also display the "prior price," defined as the lowest price at which the item was offered in the preceding thirty days. This targets a familiar practice: raising a product's reference price shortly before a sale event so that the advertised discount looks larger than it is. Take a phone that has sold at Rs 18,000 for three months. If the listed price is nudged to Rs 22,000 two days before a festival sale and then cut by twenty percent, the page today shows a saving of Rs 4,400 against a price nobody paid. From January, the thirty-day low of Rs 18,000 has to appear next to it.
Search Results and Sponsored Listings
The amended rules define "ranking" as the relative prominence or relevance a platform gives to sellers, goods or services, whatever the technology used to produce it, and prohibit manipulation of search results that misleads users or distorts relevance. A platform may not push its own private-label products up the results by rigging the ranking. Paid placements remain permitted, but a listing that has paid for its position must be clearly labelled as sponsored.
What Your Data Can and Cannot Be Used For
Platforms that run a marketplace and also sell their own brands through it may not use your browsing and purchase data to promote those brands without your specific consent. This consent is additional to whatever you have given for general data processing under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act; a valid DPDP consent does not, on its own, satisfy it.
Grievances: What Was Already There, and What Is New
The timelines have existed since 2020: a grievance officer must acknowledge your complaint within forty-eight hours and resolve it within a month. The 2026 amendment adds two things that make the timelines easier to enforce. You must be given a copy of your complaint as the grievance officer has recorded it, so there is a document to hold the platform to. And every e-commerce entity must join the National Consumer Helpline's convergence framework, so that a complaint lodged through the helpline can be tracked into the platform's own system.
Seller Disclosure and Bundled Fees
Seller disclosures on marketplaces are expanded. Sellers must state best-before or use-before dates where they apply, return shipping costs, warranties and guarantees, delivery details and the payment methods accepted. A marketplace may not charge bundled fees for services unrelated to the transaction, except as part of a disclosed loyalty or membership programme.
What Changes for You on 1 January 2027
If a platform shows you a discount, you will be able to see the real baseline. If a listing paid to appear where it does, you will know. If your complaint disappears into a chatbot, you will have a written record of it and a helpline route into the platform's system.