r/techIndia • u/ActiveAd2989 • 1h ago
General Final update on PS5 from Swiggy Instamart: I got my full refund. Here's what it actually took to get there, and my honest thoughts on the whole thing
Context : https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianGaming/s/7qKnoL8nOe
**TL;DR**: Got the full refund from Swiggy Instamart, but only after the post went viral, news coverage, and social pressure — direct contact with Swiggy and Sony alone wasn't moving anything. Sony's service center denied warranty again in person (same seller flagged for another customer that same day), and the return itself was a mess (food-delivery guy sent to pick up a PS5, broken app validation, a cancelled return, agents going silent on calls) before finally getting resolved. Had Consumer Court documents ready the whole time but chose to prioritize mental peace and public awareness over pursuing further compensation. Called Sony's own Sales team afterward and even they couldn't reliably tell me which local stores are authorised — confirming there's no real way for a consumer to check this themselves. Full writeup above for anyone who wants the details.
**The outcome**: Swiggy Instamart picked up the console and I received a full refund. But getting there cost real time and energy — days of back-and-forth with both Sony and Swiggy stonewalling me, making the original post, watching it go viral, news outlets picking it up, social accounts reposting and tagging both companies. That pressure is what actually moved things. Not politeness, not patience alone — visibility.
**On Consumer Court**: A lot of people suggested I file a case, and some even offered to help for free. I looked into it seriously — what it would take, what it would cost me out of pocket, how long it would run. I had every document ready to file. But I decided mental peace mattered more than chasing further compensation, and held off while giving the direct route one more real chance to resolve things.
**Swiggy's escalations team**: I was in contact with one agent at Swiggy Escalations throughout. On Oct 2, he asked me to wait another 48-72 hours, citing a holiday. By that point I'd already given them plenty of time, and getting asked for *more* time, again, with nothing concrete, was genuinely demoralizing.
**The Sony service center visit**: While waiting, I visited an authorized Sony service center (F1 Info Solutions & Services, Shastri Nagar) just to ask them to check my warranty status — no issues with the console, just wanted clarity. Coincidentally, another customer was there at the same time who'd bought Sony speakers from the *same seller* and was also denied warranty. They checked my invoice against the seller and denied me too. I pointed out the console is genuine and working, and that the warranty card itself says it's valid till Oct 2027 even without an invoice. Their response: "is se kuch nahi hota, authorised seller ka invoice chahiye aur warranty card" (roughly: "this doesn't mean much, we need an invoice and warranty card from an authorised seller"). They took my details, said they'd get written confirmation from Sony and send it to me — I never received anything, not even an acknowledgment. The attitude throughout was pure "policy is policy," regardless of the product being genuine.
**The pressure built, and then the return itself was its own ordeal.** On Oct 4, I got a call saying they'd arrange a pickup and refund — good news, I thought. Then:
- They sent a delivery rider on a cycle, with the insulated food-delivery bag they use for orders. He had no idea what he was picking up ("ye kya hai, baja hai kya" — "what is this, is it a speaker?") and obviously couldn't fit a PS5 in a food bag.
- He tried photographing it for the app to validate the return, but the app kept rejecting it.
- I then got a call saying my complaint "wasn't proper" because there were no images on the in-app ticket — despite every detailed email I'd sent to their Escalations team for days. He said he'd cancel the broken return and I'd need to raise a new one, promising it would still let me since he was cancelling it himself.
- It didn't. The app said the return window had closed. No way to raise a new one. No visible way to reach customer care beyond being redirected to email. i emailed repeatedly on the Swiggy escalations to call me asap.
- I found an old number from a previous call and got through. The moment I mentioned how serious this had gotten — the social media spread — the agent went silent on the call without hanging up. I kept saying hello, got no response, called back, same thing happened again. On the third call I directly confronted this, explained everything again, and was told she couldn't create a new return, I'd have to email Swiggy. She asked if the product was even working, and when I said yes, told me to just go claim the warranty at a service center — she had no idea what the actual issue was. I had to ask her to literally search "swiggy ps5" in a new tab for her to understand the scale of what was happening. Her tone changed after that, but the answer stayed the same: email Swiggy.
- I asked to speak to the original escalations agent I'd been dealing with. By coincidence, he called in while I was still on with her. I explained everything again. He created a new return on the spot, added the required images himself so the pickup could be validated, and I asked specifically that they send someone equipped to handle a high-value item this time.
- Pickup finally happened properly, and I received the refund the next morning.
I also got a call afterward from Swiggy Instamart's internal team, asking detailed questions — working condition, serial number, what the service center said, whether I'd shown the warranty card. They said they'd take this up directly with Sony. I told them I'm glad to help if it leads to a real fix for other Instamart buyers in this situation.
**Testing Sony's own sales department**: Since "buy only from an authorised seller" is the crux of this whole issue, I called Sony's Sales team afterward just to see how well *they* could actually help a buyer trying to do the right thing. I gave them my pincode and asked for authorised sellers in my area. They named Sony Center, and when I asked about Croma, Vijay Sales, Reliance Digital, they said "all authorised" — vague, no specifics. I asked them to find ones near me and give me the address, they didn't . then i asked about a specific local store near me which has plasystation banner on their store (Hari Om Electronics) — they had no information either way, she said they don't have that information. I then asked if there's *any* way for a regular customer to verify a store's authorisation status on the spot, since no seller is going to volunteer that they're unauthorised. They had no answer for that either.
If even Sony's own sales department can't reliably tell a customer who's buying in good faith which stores are authorised, buying a Sony product in India is effectively a gamble — and Sony reserves full right to deny your warranty afterward regardless.
**My take, for what it's worth**:
I've bought plenty of electronics over the years — laptops, phones, appliances, online and offline — and never once thought to verify a seller's manufacturer authorisation status. As a consumer, you're told to check the product: open-box delivery, working condition, genuine unit. If something's wrong, you contact the brand, they verify the serial number, and they handle it. That's the deal everywhere else. This entire process with Sony was not consumer-friendly.
Even granting that Sony has legitimate reasons to control its sales channels, the failure to actually enforce that — letting units reach unauthorised platforms at scale, for what multiple people in this thread and elsewhere say has been going on for a long time — is on Sony and the distribution chain, not the end consumer. My unit was a genuine India-market unit, BIS-certified, imported by Sony india. If units are leaking into unauthorised retail, that's a failure of their own control over their supply chain. And it's not as if Swiggy Instamart only just started selling consoles — people have reportedly been buying PS5s through them for a long time, i saw a post as old as 10 months ago where someone bought ps5 from swiggy instamart. Both companies know this is happening.
What I expected from Sony: verify the unit is genuine (it was), verify proof of purchase (I had it), and honour the warranty while pursuing the unauthorised seller separately, since that's an issue between Sony and their distribution, not between Sony and me. Instead, the message the whole way through was essentially "you're out of luck, and that's not our problem."
Swiggy Instamart's side wasn't much better — support is genuinely hard to reach for anything beyond a basic order issue, and for days all I got back were copy-paste apology templates with no actual movement.
I could have taken this to Consumer Court, and I still could if I wanted to. But I'm genuinely glad I chose to put my energy into raising awareness instead — if this pushes either company toward even a small policy change, that's worth more to me than one extra individual compensation payout.
To anyone else dealing with something similar: raise your voice, stay patient, stick to the facts, document everything. Every story like this one that gets told makes it a little harder for the next consumer to be dismissed the same way.
