Selling Products in the Online Store in the System of {the Supplier is Responsible for Shipping} "Drop Shipping": its Reality and its Ruling

Abstract

This study deals with a kind of modern e-commerce called "Drop Shipping", which means selling products in the online store and the supplier pays for the shipping. The owner of the store displays specifications for products that he does not own, but rather they are in the supplier’s possession. When a customer buys from the store, the store owner buys them from the supplier, and asks her/him to ship them directly to the customer, and thus the merchant gets rid of the cost of storing the goods. This study shows the jurisprudential interpretation of this transaction and its ruling.

The study consists of an introduction and two chapters:

The introduction includes: the definition of e-commerce in the system of the supplier is responsible for shipping.

The first chapter: the jurisprudential interpretation for selling products in the system of the supplier is responsible for shipping and its ruling.

The second chapter: the controls of selling products in the system of the supplier pays the cost of shipping.

I found in the results of this study that the closest interpretation to this transaction is that it is a Parallel Salam ("two Salam contracts" one of them between the customer and the store owner and the other between the store owner and the supplier) as it is  a contract for a specified price product and not specified and thus it is not considered selling something that isn't already owned and the problem of guaranteed income without selling. I discussed the other two interpretations which are: selling something that isn't already owned, or a selling contract for a described product. The obligation of the supplier to ship the product and deliver it to the first buyer is not as a principal contractor with him, as this contradicts the controls of the validity of the parallel Salam, but rather it is considered that the store owner authorizes the supplier to collect the Salam debt from himself to his principal, and to ship and deliver it to the customer, and this gets it out of the problem of transferring the debt of Salam.