Yu Yureka Sale Was A Cruel Joke Played On Consumers!

[Updated: 15th Jan 2015 – See end of the post] 

Micromax Yu Yureka Sale concluded today – and from what I can gather, the sale turned out to be a cruel joke played on interested buyers – nearly 3,00,000 of them who had registered for it!

And let me tell you, I am not one of the disgruntled one, who was not able to buy. I was in fact able to make the purchase for Yu Yureka phone for advertised price of Rs. 8,999. It was a tough ordeal, but I was successful in the end. However, most of them were not!

Let me explain my experience before we talk about what many others faced. The sale probably started a few seconds earlier as I refreshed the actual buy page about 2 seconds before the start time and I had the magic “Buy Now” staring at me. I clicked on it and Yureka was promptly added to my cart – The message said “You have 15 minutes to complete the transaction”.

While adding Yureka to cart was a breeze, choosing the address, choosing the payment mode and finally placing the order was not. First Amazon site went down multiple times with 503 error page. After numerous refreshes when it came back up, the page froze at every step and the page just kept loading. As the Yureka was already in my cart, I could close and start over again, but every time, it was same issue – I tried atleast 10 times, and finally when I had less than a minute to complete the transaction, I could go through all 3 steps successfully!

Interestingly all through the process, the price shown was 12,499/- but on the final “Place Your Order” page they applied the Rs. 3,500 promotion, which bought down the price to Rs. 8,999/-.

Why Yu Yureka Flash sale was a Farce?

Micromax has said that 10,000 Yureka phones were available for sale – but it seems that was not the case. According to a blog post (Via) written by Abhay Rana, there were only 3000 phones that were available. He found out using their deal API status that can be found out through third party sites. Here is what he has mentioned.

The way deals work on amazon is once you are on a deal page, the client keeps checking the deal status every few seconds so as to let you know as soon as its status changes. This deal status response does not only include the deal status code (say EXPIRED/SOLDOUT/AVAILABLE), but also includes the deal’s nitty details.

These details include:

• totalCouponCount: 3000
• claimedCouponCount: 2657
• percentClaimed: 88
• type:LIGHTNING_DEAL
• title: Yureka
• dealPrice: 8999
• currentPrice: 12999

What is even more interesting is that only 2657 phones were sold out of 3000 available according to the deal status shown above. The Yu Yureka page also confirms this – we checked the page late in the evening and it clearly showed that 88% people claimed the deal. Here is the screenshot!

Bottom line is – At Rs. 8999/- only 3000 phones were available. 

But there is more – many users had to pay the normal price of Rs. 12,499/- to get the phone, They could not avail the promotional price of Rs. 8,999 which was advertised by Micromax all through out. Micromax had never mentioned that Yureka will be available for Rs. 12,499.

Many users spoke to customer support and here is what the customer support had to say.

@8ap @pradeep_dhawan I talked with @amazonIN customer care, they told manufacturer increased the price hence I canceled the order for 12499

— Farhan Ghumra (@FarhanGhumra) January 13, 2015

One scenario could have been that only 3000 were available at discounted rate, while other 7000 were available at Rs. 12,499.

Whatever the case, Micromax (and probably Amazon) played a cruel joke on interested users and it is not acceptable!

Update:

Amazon.in has said that the price of Rs. 12,499 which some saw was a technical glitch that they had encountered. It seems that people who bought the phones at Rs. 12,499 will get reduced price, athe update says, they are actively working to address the issue for impacted customers.
They also posted an update on Twitter in regards to same. Here is the update

Apologies for the technical glitch, we're actively working on addressing this issue for impacted customers @YUplaygod pic.twitter.com/klyvp0Ioi6

— Amazon.in (@amazonIN) January 15, 2015