– Bhavya Desai

With the center allowing the sale of alcohol online in many states, an unprecedented rise in the number of online frauds while ordering alcohol have been reported. Most of these cases are based of social media accounts, especially Facebook where fake profiles in the name of wine shops/retailers have been created along with a number to order the products from.

The consumers call the number provided and are asked to make part or full payment of the products ordered by providing the card details, resulting in the money debited from their card by the online fraudsters.

If you are a consumer who is looking to order alcohol online then it is important to first note if your state is allowing home delivery of alcohol or not? For instance, consumers have been commonly misinterpreting that home delivery is currently allowed in all states resulting in them falling prey to such scams.



The list of the state/city and the method in which they are allowing delivery are below:

State/City How orders are taken

Delhi – E-token

Odisha – Online order and home delivery

Tamil Nadu – Online order and home delivery

Punjab – Order through call and home delivery

Pune – E-token

West Bengal – Online order and home delivery

Mumbai – Order through call and home delivery

Chhattisgarh – Online order and home delivery

Kerala – Book online and collect from store

Currently most of the ordering for home delivery across the states are being done via state govt apps or online platforms governed by the state regulators. Punjab and Mumbai are the only exceptions to this rule where the consumer can call for home delivery of alcohol.

But as reported in our previous article (see article: Maharashtra allows home delivery of Alcohol – sans Mumbai), since Mumbai is in the red containment zone there are no home deliveries that are permitted in the city. Also with wine shops not allowed to operate due to the lockdown in the city, officially they can’t deliver alcohol even if you ordered them.

Making things situation worst for the consumers currently is the reduced banking staff to report the fraudulent transactions. Consumers have had to wait for a longer time than usual while calling the banking hotlines to report such incidents on finding out that they have been duped.