Why the Rs 99 smartphone Achhe Din by Namotel is just another scam
How cheap can you get?
Quite a lot if you go by the happenings in the world of smartphones in India. In the last few months, we have seen not one but a number of attempts to create "cheap" smartphones.
The first of these was Freedom 251, a phone created by Ringing Bells. It later turned out that the phone wasn't exactly created by the Bells. It was a phone with a price of around Rs 3,000 that was bought by Ringing Bells and then passed off as Freedom 251.
Also read: Freedom 251 rings of a marketing fraud
The second was Docoss X1, a phone that was priced at Rs 888. Although costlier by the high - or should we say low - standards set by Freedom 251, the Docoss X1 was also something that was not exactly feasible. Rs 888 right now is just not the price at which a smartphone with touchscreen and all can be sold.
But phone that takes the cake is the Achhe Din by Namotel. This one is supposed to sell at Rs 99! You can buy even a 3-inch touchscreen in China's component market for Rs 99.
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| Scam alert: Achhe Din by Namotel is priced at Rs 99. But has anyone actually seen them? |
The reality, however, is that even though these phones exist, in news reports, advertisements, on social media and all, they are not the phones that you can buy.
You can only pre-book them, which is if the websites that have been set for these phones work.
And that seems to be the whole point of these phones. Once you pre-book the phone - and they are cheap enough that you will want to pre-book them - you give the "companies" behind these phones the money. Some money.
Now see it like this. Even if 10,000 people book the Rs 99 phone, which is entirely plausible given the price and number of people interested in it, the company behind the phone would end up getting Rs 9,90000. This money can then be used by the company to earn interest or may be as investment fund.
It doesn't need to ship the phone. After three to six months, half of the people who spent Rs 99 will forget about it, because the amount is so low that "who cares".
Other half, if they ask for refund, will probably get their Rs 99 back. But in the interim, the "company" behind the phone would have made a little of that and a little of this using the funds it had.
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| Pre-booking is the only way you can order a cheap smartphone like Achhe Din by Namotel. |
In this way, the pre-booking amount it gets is like interest-free loan for it. If this is what is happening it is also probably fraud, but then this is something the government needs to look at. And so far the government hasn't looked into.
But as the number of "cheap" phones available for pre-booking grows in India, the government ought to act soon enough and order a probe.