Is Flipkart's Big Billion Day Sale a con job?
It has been four hours since Flipkart's big bonanza went live. In four hours all kinds of e-retail hell has broken lose. Flipkart crashed (nothing new), products were sold out (nothing new), and this time around it is being accused of price inflation (absolutely new).
For all purposes, the Big Billion Day Sale is a con job, a glorified marketing gimmick to reassure itself that it can take on a juggernaut called Amazon.
It is no coincidence that this bonanza sale coincides with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos India's visit last week. Flipkart even had massive hoardings around Bangalore and New Delhi international airports, perhaps the intention was to show Bezos who the online retail boss is in India.
The truth is that Amazon is a giant and is disruptive, and with its entry in India, Flipkart has been forced to up its game.
Everything that Flipkart has achieved in the last year has been a result of Amazon's full-fledged entry. From the Amazon Prime like Flipkart First service, the one-day delivery option to the acquisition of Myntra, and now the marketing ploy, the Big Billion Day Sale.
It has also announced exclusive tie-ups with popular smartphone brands such as Motorola, Xiaomi and Lenovo. But where is the back-end infrastructure to deliver and support the demand at this scale?
The Big Billion Day Sale is another example of Flipkart promising way more than it can actually offer. Its cloud infrastructure is not adept for such a sale. Amazon, on the other hand, created its own cloud infrastructure called Amazon Web Services for Amazon.com, which has become the backbone of some of the biggest websites.
The offers it promises are farcical at best. While, it promises discounts between 30 and 90 per cent, the majority of the deals are on products that have been sitting in Flipkart's fulfilment centres.
On products, which are popular, Flipkart is either offering a minor discount or an exchange offer. The new Motorola smartphones are good examples as there is no discount on them, instead there is a ghastly exchange offer. All this is backed up with limited stocks.
Xiaomi says that it will offer 25,000 units of its Mi3 smartphone for people who have not been able to buy it in the past. It also says that 150,000 units of the Redmi 1S will be offered, but considering the marketing hype, this number will surely disappoint.
Flipkart's weak infrastructure does not help matters too. Transactions are failing either because the server is crashing or the response times are too slow. Topping the unpleasant buying experience is the fact that people are complaining that prices of products were raised in the lead up to the sale.
A Chrome Extension called "buyhatke" revealed how prices of products, which were stagnant for extended period, increased days before the big billion sale. With the sale discount now, the price of the product is essentially the same as what it was before Flipkart increased the prices.
What they have done is this: First, dangle the proverbial carrot of sale, then increase the price of the product before the sale and then sell the product for the same price as before. If this is not a con job, then I am not sure what is.
I am not the only one who is saying this. If one just types in #BigBillionDay and #Flipkart on Twitter, then social network is flooded with complaints regarding the sale.
Plot twist: Flipkart's #BigBillionDay is actually them joining Narendra Modi's #CleanIndia campaign. By cleaning out old stock, that is.
— Akshar (@AksharPathak) October 6, 2014NEWS : #Flipkart to offer 10% discount on 404 Page. They are now calling it 363 Page http://t.co/euwuWHsmBI #BigBillionDay
— ashish sinha (@cnha) October 6, 2014Flipkart 's #bigbillionday #bigbillionsale. What you actually sold out today is your own damn credibility . #Megafail
— Tinu Cherian Abraham (@tinucherian) October 6, 2014The Big Billion Day on Flipkart what a rip off. Amazon must be laughing themselves to death #flipkart #BigBillionDay
— Ivan Bayross (@ivanbayross) October 6, 2014Sending Mangalyaan to the moon seems to be easier than placing an order on #Flipkart. #BigBillionDay
— Jeffry Issac (@J_for_Jeff) October 6, 2014Looks like the whole #flipkart site is on flash sales like Redmi1S, the moment you click on buy it's already sold out.
— Shiva??? Kri???? (@krishnanblr) October 6, 2014NEWS : #Flipkart to offer 10% discount on 404 Page. They are now calling it 363 Page http://t.co/euwuWHsmBI #BigBillionDay
— ashish sinha (@cnha) October 6, 2014#bigbillionday #flipkart Most of the pages are showing 502 error pic.twitter.com/Be42icHNFT
— Manoj Sawant ? ? ? (@mak_sturd) October 6, 2014