Big billion day - Flipkart - is it a failure

For stuff like this you need to be logged in and ready with your cards to buy @ 12 AM. I bought the Moto E for Rs. 5499, 1500 lesser than the price now and before oct 6th. I know someone at work bought 5 pen drives for Rs. 5 (16gbs)

What do you mean by be ready @ 12 AM?
 
I could have been ready at 12-midnight, in fact I was, as I keep the hours of an owl --- it said sale starts at 8.00am.

Inspired by someone who accidentally typed that Flipkart apologises for "tomorrow," instead of yesterday, I wrote, on another forum...
it could become a tradition!

Dear Customer, we apologise in advance for the dreadful experience that we are going to give you on our site tomorrow during our special sale in which all the items with which we have tempted you will not actually be available ---or, at least, not to you--- and you won't be able to buy the ones that are due to problems with the payments system.

We do assure you of our best intentions ---at all other times. It's just that, for a happy shopping experience, we strongly suggest that you avoid our site tomorrow. We know you deserve better, and we really will do better to serve you. But not tomorrow.

Hoping that you will have a happy visit to our site. Not tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Flopcart.​

I'm a vulture for a good deal, but I wasn't too disappointed over this as, even if it had gone well, I didn't expect anything worthwhile to be left by the time I got to the computer around mid-day.
 
I got an email that they are trying to deliver the same or better product against my order which got cancelled after payment. FK has promised to confirm this by 10th. If they do it then my confidence on them will be restored
 
I got an email that they are trying to deliver the same or better product against my order which got cancelled after payment. FK has promised to confirm this by 10th. If they do it then my confidence on them will be restored

Please let us know.
 
It was a total mess...................

i got nothing. the situation was same for the full day.
the good deals were sold out. no stocks were available
 
I too couldn't find the 'big sale' items - like the pen drive or the hand blender for Re.1 nor the tab or the Lumia 520 at less than 1k. However, did pick up a couple of items which I thought was VFM and less than the competition. Overall, I am not sure if this is anything other than a marketing gimmick.

you guys seriously thought they would give you pen drives, hand blender and other stuff at rs 1?? wow! :clapping:

dont mind just kidding.
Actually, as you can see most of the people went for such deals and ended up buy other stuff.( they say a total of 1.5 million purchases were made.
so when you ask if the sale was a success...then for the flipkart people it surely was. they got what they wanted and more.
;)
 
For stuff like this you need to be logged in and ready with your cards to buy @ 12 AM. I bought the Moto E for Rs. 5499, 1500 lesser than the price now and before oct 6th. I know someone at work bought 5 pen drives for Rs. 5 (16gbs)

Yup and what did you buy? An elephant?
 
I ended up buying a Nikon lens 55-200 VR at exactly the same price as it was before the sale :) but was still cheaper than most retailers (incl amazon) primarily because of the 10% cashback.

They have refunded me Rs. 180 as they couldnt deliver the next day (as I have free one day shipping due to Flipkart first), so happy about it. Got an extra discount for 1 day delay.

Another piece I bought was some crockery which was 15% cheaper than other sites, the cashback made it sweeter.

The discounts were marginal for the items I selected, their infrastructure totally failed from their website, to their payment gateway as well as their logistics.

Overall, I think its early days for guys like FK, they will learn and be better for it. Guys like Amazon have had Black Friday sales for years and all had their initial hiccups.
 
Cheap marketing gimmicks from Flipkart..........stay away from such shady offers......
 
I guess you guys would have seen the huge discussions on the FlipKart sale in the newspapers today? On one hand, Flipkart definitely needs to be screwed for the underhanded tactic of raising prices and then offering discounts on that but on the other, with talks of the government planning to get involved in monitoring and regulating etailers, we might end up losing all the benefits that online retail has brought to us (especially given the increasing pressure being applied on the BJP by a key constituent - the shopkeepers of India!).

As a first step to more transparency in this sector, T&Cs imposed by etailers against price scraping from their websites needs to be banned completely - this is the biggest anti-competitive practice prevalent. Sites like CamelCamelCamel need to come up to either scrape or through APIs access price data from the leading etailers, so that customers know about price trends and price comparisons across sites!
 
Any consumers here are interested to go to shop if the online is cheaper ???

So why blaming flipkart ;);) Ofcourse it is an marketing gimmick, yes this is needed to stay float in the market to get more fund inputs or else they will close their online shop soon.

We will wait for an Indian company for coming up and not an international and of-course an colonial company to take back our hard earned money to their country.:cool:
 
I do not understand why the brick stores are crying foul.

1) Most of them have made a killing by selling at inflated prices to uninformed customers.

2) They do not give proper service. Once the customer pays the money, then the customer is at the shops mercy.

3) Try to sell older stock and models at inflated prices.

4) Not provide any service to the customer and saying get in touch with the manufacturer by yourself.

5) Push demo pieces on unsuspecting customers.

Why "CRY FOUL" when the ball is in the other foot? Fight it with better pricing, better transparent policies and beat the online dealers at their own game!

That is the way to go ahead, not crib like a spoiled baby when the going is tough!
 
I do not understand why the brick stores are crying foul.
Because they can never survive in a market dominated by e-tailing. See the pathetic condition of stores like BestBuy, Carphone Warehouse and Landmark in India etc to see the future of brick and mortar stores. The worrying thing is that with millions of Kirana shops, this group has enough political clout and "Votebank power" to get what they want out of governments. Where is 1 Flipkart of SnapDeal in comparison?
 
I do not understand why the brick stores are crying foul.

1) Most of them have made a killing by selling at inflated prices to uninformed customers.

2) They do not give proper service. Once the customer pays the money, then the customer is at the shops mercy.

3) Try to sell older stock and models at inflated prices.

4) Not provide any service to the customer and saying get in touch with the manufacturer by yourself.

5) Push demo pieces on unsuspecting customers.

Why "CRY FOUL" when the ball is in the other foot? Fight it with better pricing, better transparent policies and beat the online dealers at their own game!

That is the way to go ahead, not crib like a spoiled baby when the going is tough!

+1. They are simply not getting over the fact that their fat margins are under danger. Last week, my in laws bought a Philips LED TV 32". It was marked up at 26.5K. I bargained hard as it was selling for as low as 19825/- online. They finally agreed for 21K. It was more than 1K expensive than online, but felt it was a fair deal as I was getting the product hand to hand. Now imagine what general buyers would have paid against the original 26.5K mark up price? Same story when I bought my projector. They quoted a price 5K higher than the online price. I just showed them the link on flipkart and they offered me almost the same price. How? They are enjoying good margins no doubt even today. Remember, the online sales even today accounts for less than 5% of total sales.

And then the return policy of online sellers is much better than the brick & mortar shops. And if a problem occurs, you need to contact the manufacturer yourself. They will give you the number of the service center and happily claim that their job/ service is over.
 
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So why blaming flipkart ;);) Ofcourse it is an marketing gimmick, yes this is needed to stay float in the market to get more fund inputs or else they will close their online shop soon.

Every company uses marketing gimmick. As long as they are within legal limits, we can be frustrated but cannot blame them legally. We all know that "fair and lovely" will not make you a star even if Shahrukh Khan says so. :clapping:

However, regarding this flipkart big billion day, prices of many products have been increased just before the sale. The prices of many goods were constant for last 3-4 months, but increased by Rs.500-1000 just before the sale and then a discount was offered. So technically you are paying the same (as the earlier price) or even more or little bit less (that the earlier price). So the discount really does not match the way they promoted this sale. Yes, it is a marketing gimmick and we cannot legally blame them as long as they are not selling it above MRP.

Now with stock issues, people were unable to buy stuff as they were mostly "out of stock". Flipkart must have anticipated wrongly while storing the number of goods or may be the number of buyers have increased more than what they anticipated. So if there are 100 40"TVs available for Rs.20,000 and there are 10,000 buyers for such tvs, chances are high that within a minute all tvs will be sold. So we cannot really blame them this time.

But there has been instances, where people have selected a product (even products worth more than 20-30K), added to the cart, made payment and confirmation was sent. But flipkart later sent an email cancelling the order for fictitious/ invalid grounds and promises to return/ refund the amount within 7-10 working days. This is where it hurts the most. Flipkart is legally bound to send the product as they have accepted the payment. And if they are unable to deliver the product as promised, they are all bound to pay interest and damages.

Suppose, 5000 customers' ordered were cancelled and were asked to wait for 10 days refund

no. of customers - 5000
Avg. amount of product - Rs.20,000
Total amount - 5000 x 20,000 = Rs.10,00,00,000
Please calculate the interest.

Can they do it legally and can we at least not blame them for this?
 
A beautiful, well-constructed speaker with class-leading soundstage, imaging and bass that is fast, deep, and precise.
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