Flipkart had not left any stone unturned while advertising their ‘The Big Billion Day Sale’ on October 6th. Full page advertisements on leading newspapers, radio ads, TV ads, SMS ads and digital ads all over the web. I doubt any Internet user in India was not aware of this mega sale by India’s leading ecommerce portal.
But at the end, it proved to be a huge disappointment for those who ventured out into their portal yesterday. Not one but hundreds and thousands of social media users have vented out their anger and frustration on the inefficiency of the sale.
As per the announcements, the ‘Big Billion Day’ sale was conducted so that one billion Indians can converge on Flipkart on one particular day, and shop their hearts out.
October 6th was chosen as the founders of Flipkart had launched their venture from the flat number 610. But besides perfect marketing and advertising of their intentions, unfortunately very less was done to make the shopping experience smooth, and servers robust to handle the onslaught of traffic.
As per the advertised information, Flipkart was supposed to provide heavy discounts ranging from 10% to 50% on electronics items, books, mobiles and other products.
As soon as the sale period started on Monday morning, consumers who logged into their Flipkart accounts witnessed server crashes and incomplete orders. The products which the consumers clicked suddenly became ‘Out of Stock’ or the page failed to open.
And some of the fortunate few who were able to put across the order, failed to make payments. And even if the payment was done at the discounted rate, the consumers soon received emails stating that the order was cancelled due to ‘technical issues’. In case the consumer was brave enough to order it second time, to his horror, the price was found to be even higher than other ecommerce portals selling the same item.
It was a big goof-up on the part of Flipkart, and the Tweets and comments clearly share the sentiments. The Twitterati were at it for the whole day – no wonder the #BigBillionDay hashtag was top trending for 11 hours and 15 minutes on 6th October.
A Twitter user actually shared images of the price fluctuation, which several consumers described as ‘price rigging’. They claimed that the price was intentionally increased just before the sale so that they can show the discount.
Frustrated consumers created special hashtags on Twitter to vent out their anger.
Some of the hashtags were: #FlopKart; #BigBillionFoolsDay and more.
Some of the Tweets shared:
But Flipkart Declares Success
Surprisingly, Flipkart has announced that the Big Billion Day Sale was a roaring success with $100 million sale achieved within 24 hours, along with a billion hits. A statement issued by the founders: “Our teams and sellers worked days and nights to make this sale a success — and our efforts paid off. We got a billion hits on our site and achieved our 24-hour sales target of $100 mn in gross merchandise value (GMV) in just 10 hours,”
On the issue of technical errors while loading pages, the statement said, “The traffic was heavy but our server did not crash.”
Were you successful in purchasing any product from Flipkart during their ‘Big Billion Day Sale’? How was your experience?
Please share your feedback and suggestions by commenting right here!