Big billion day - Flipkart - is it a failure

RMCWS

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Is the big billion day sale by flipkart a failure?

When I logged on in morning at 9:30 am, after one and half hour of the start time of the sale, I noticed few items (most probably pen drive or wifi adapter) was priced at Rs.1 but it was "SOLD OUT". Similar was for a tab which was priced at Rs.199. The MRP was around 5K.

I thought I was late (by 1 and half hours) so they were all sold out. Later on I found from friends and online reviews that even those who logged in before 8 am were unable to get anything at Rs.1. They also found it to be sold out.

Look anywhere and you will find nothing but negative reviews of the sale.

I further looked for some movies (DVD/ bds) and some vinyls. There were hardly any discount (I mean the usual discounts were there, but nothing as projected like the big billion day sale)

Anyone had any positive response from Flipkart today?
 
It was nothing but marketing hype. I tried at 8.02am and faced the same situation.
 
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.
 
Entire Deal thing seemed to be a marketing gimmick.
Forget about Re.1 products. Even other products which were priced lower were stocked out @ 8:00am.

Even Snapdeal had 1 hr deals where iPhone 5s were offered @ Rs.25,000/- but when we select buy option it was sold out. Eventually they sold some pieces for Rs.30,999/-.
 
there are many stories doing rounds on the internet about wrongdoings by flipkart.i myself logged in at around 8.07 and by that time most of the "Rs 1" deals were shown as sold out.i also tried adding few items to my cart which magically disappeared once i pressed the proceed to payment tab.one of friend also posted pictures on his fb page showing how flipkart artificially inflated prices a day or two before the sale and then offered discount to bring it to its original selling price.i however did manage to procure a kenstar induction cooktop for 999(mrp Rs 1999) for my friend and a celestron impulse 10x50 binoculars for 1500(quoted at 2990) for my self.did a crosscheck with other eCommerce portals and found out that i did get a real and substantial discount on these two.i miss the Rs 1300 samsung galaxy tab2 deal(mrp around 13k)though.so i kind of have mixed opinion about the sale
 
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I saw the LG plasma 42 inches at Rs 20,500/- all inclusive. This price also had 10% off on HDFC and Citibank cards.

Unfortunately no delivery to my town, hence I could not order even though I had it in my cart.

But it is correct. I think the whole thing was a big hullaballo with no real big ticket item sale prices for genuine customers, that is my feeling.

But Moto E is being offered at Rs 5499/- which is a good price. I bought it at Rs 6999/-.

There are a few items. But most of it is hogwash.
 
Its a gimmick. I was behind the preeti induction cooker, shown at Rs 99. when I add it to cart, it automatically show as out of stock, but when I return to deal page it always was there. They were making fun of people I guess.
Let us wait for amazon's reply on 10/10 and see how they handle it.
 
I too had the same experience, i logged in at 7.45 am and at 8.00 i refreshed the page and even by then the samsung tab was sold out. I thought to myself that I should be getting a faster internet connection. But as the day progressed I got to hear the same story from everyone around me and I started to think may be they had 1 item on the offer which was grabbed up by someone. Instantly gone was also the nokia lumia phone and the usb pen drive.
Yes as echoed above I did see some online comments that snapdeal was offering products at a much lower price on certain items.
Occasionally I also got page not found when I tried to add certain products to the cart.
 
I had placed an order for Sony 42W700B through flipkart today for 41K(with exchange of old tv giving 4K). Order is through, but I am not sure when it will be delivered!
 
Some sites indicate that both FK and snapdeal had sales of 600 crores today. If that's the case, snapdeal must be laughing all the way to the bank, piggybacking on FK's ads.
 
Someone booked the domain - BigBillionDay.com on couple of days back. I checked the whois today but could not find any details of the owner/ admin. It was surprisingly redirected to amazon.in.

Right now it is redirected to a personal blog (Big-Billion-Day) and it clearly states "This Domain is not owned by/related to any E-Commerce Website. It is created for my personal use.".

Not surely whether it was done by someone for fun or anyone from amazon, but cleverly they have removed the redirected url to avoid any legal complications.

Van Heusen Slim Fit Mens trousers which were hovering between Rs.1200 to Rs.1700 in the last 1 month have suddenly shot up to Rs.2200 in just 1 day! Cool technique to show people a huge Rs.500 discount on their favorite trousers on 6th October??!!

Links - http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/flipkart-big-billion-day-sale-riddled-with-problems-602498?fb
http://missionsharingknowledge.com/flipkarts-the-big-billion-day-a-pricing-scam/
 
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Went thro' similar experience on flipkart as most others. Some of the things that I was looking for e.g 2TB hard drive are still showing 'Coming Soon' :)

I did get some ok deals on a couple of items like 16gb pen drives, badminton racket etc. But overall I realized that I wasted quite a bit of time today in checking to see if the items I wanted are finally made available at the advertised price.

Also noticed that few items (e.g. Huawei 3g dongle 8231) that were part of today's special sale were actually at higher price that what you can get in local market.

Amazon.in sale is now coming up from 10-Oct - hope the experience is better there.
 
Some substantial deals for both customers and flipkart are the for the flipkart exclusive items which are unsold.

ASUS Zenfone 5 - Back on stock. 10k is unbelievable price for its capabilities.

Moto E - phone discount is substantial and is less than the US retail price which by itself is too good.

Moto X Gen1 - Great phone for 18k. A good deal for customers and also flipkart who used this op to move unsold items. (You can notice all unsold US stock being directed here - The ones without the charger is for US market).

Lot of redme 1S sold - 1.5L phones in one day! Ahem!

Lot of offers in watches too.

I am not sure how these account for 1 billion anything.

Maybe total cost crossed 1 billion for the day since I saw a everyone who visited the site bought something or the other, they need it or not :)
 
Got a mail from flip kart regarding MI3. As i had registered for 5 times but could not get it, They added it to my cart which was there up to 3 pm today.
Has to left the deal, as already purchased Z3.
I think MI3 sale was also a marketing stunt.
 
This was indeed shocking. Why have front page ads? Why create a hype and have nothing as told. Even their mobile app was haywire.

I was interested in a Bosch kit which was 3k and when I clicked on Buy Now, magic... Swoosh and disappeared. Dint waste any more of my time on FK. I hear they also sell fake perfumes as told by a friend. Sheesh.
 
It was nothing but hype. I tried to buy the samsung tab for Rs.1300 - but at the back of my mind I was thinking this is too good to be true, and that it was. They were out of stock at 7.59.
Eventually I did buy a 1tb slim seagate for 4600, which is the same price as Snapdeal (even bigger crooks imo) so I guess it is ok.
However these kind of sales need to be regulated by consumer court or some other Judicial body so they don't rip off people. Just imagine how much sales they generated by selling to people who could not get the really low priced items, so they buy the next higher priced ones - classic bait and switch which is a crime in many countries, but with our Chalta hai attitude here, it is openly practiced.
Cheers,
Sid
 
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