Returns, cancellations and refunds

1.The short version

Cancel free any time before the pharmacy dispenses your order. After it has been dispensed, medicines cannot be taken back into stock — but anything that arrives damaged, wrong, expired, or warm when it should have been cold is replaced or refunded in full.

The rest of this page is that rule in detail, and how to raise it.

2.Cancelling before dispatch

You can cancel from the order page at no cost until the pharmacy has packed your order. Anything you have paid is refunded in full.

We may also cancel before dispatch — if no pharmacy in range can fill the order, if a prescription cannot be approved, or if the address turns out to be outside the delivery area. You are refunded in full and told which of these it was.

3.After it has been dispensed

Once a pharmacist has dispensed and packed your order it is out of the shop’s stock permanently, so a plain change of mind cannot be accepted. If you refuse a delivery at the door, the delivery fee is not refunded.

This is not about convenience. A medicine that has left a licensed premises cannot be verified as having been stored correctly, and putting it back on a shelf would put the next customer at risk.

4.What we replace or refund

In full, with no delivery fee charged for the replacement:

• The wrong medicine, the wrong strength, or the wrong pack size.
• A pack that arrives damaged, opened, or leaking.
• A medicine that is expired, or so close to expiry that you cannot finish the course.
• A refrigerated medicine that arrived warm, or with the cold chain visibly broken.
• An item you were charged for that was not in the bag.
• An order that never arrives.

5.What we cannot take back

• A correctly supplied medicine you no longer want.
• A pack that has been opened, or a strip that has been partly used, where there is nothing wrong with it.
• A medicine your doctor has since changed. Ask the pharmacist — they will often tell you what to do with the remainder.

6.How to raise it

Open the order on the orders page and report the problem there. It reaches the pharmacy that dispensed it and our support team at the same time.

Tell us within 48 hours of delivery, and keep the pack and the label. A photograph of the pack, the batch number and the expiry helps us settle it in one message rather than three.

You can also write to support@thelocalpharmacy.in.

7.How refunds are paid

To the method you paid with. We do not issue store credit instead of a refund unless you ask for it.

We release the refund as soon as the claim is accepted. How long it then takes to appear is set by your bank or UPI provider, and is usually five to seven working days.

For a cash-on-delivery order we collect your UPI ID or bank details to make the refund, and use them for nothing else.

8.Prescription orders

A cancelled prescription order does not consume the prescription — the approval returns and you can order against it again.

Where only part of a prescription could be supplied, you are charged only for what was dispensed.

9.If we have not resolved it

Escalate to our Grievance Officer at grievance@thelocalpharmacy.in. We acknowledge a complaint within 48 hours and aim to resolve it within one month, as the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules require.