Yesterday, on 6th October 2014, Flipkart announced The Big Billion Day sale as one of the biggest on Flipkart ever since it was launched as full fledged e-commerce portal and Flipkart claimed that it was the giant sale ever in the history of eCommerce in India. However, people found it rather strange and smells rat in it.
People eagerly waited for the sale, however on D-day a lot of customers found that the prices of most of the products were suddenly raised substantially from its regular price and then discounted which may be higher than the regular prices.
Flipkart might have underrated and underestimated its customers of their intelligence and shopping techniques as lot of people who use to buy things online uses tools and plugins to track the prices for x days and can also compare the prices of particular commodity available on difference e-commerce stores. Online tools such as Pricify and Chrome extensions like BuyHatke provide users to monitor/track prices of any product for n-number of days and compare prices of same brand products on different e-stores.
A lot of customers complaint that Flipkart raised 60-70% costs on all products few days before the sale, so on the D day they can claim to have offered supreme deals which they felt as a cheating to consumers.
Cherry Parekh, one of a Flipkart customer bought a dress worth Rs 899 this week (see shipment details in image below) and today she was shocked to see the rate which was increased to Rs 1899, which on the sale day might again be Rs 899.
The Compare Hatke chrome extension gives a comparison of price items for a period of time. This extension's results have quite been what could be termed the worst imaginable. The prices of many items have been shot up (deliberately or not) within 24-50 hours of starting of Big Billion Day.
A Flipkart user on Reddit.com commented - "Swayam Doublesheet which has been consistent at around Rs.1124 for over a month now, has suddenly shot up to Rs.1500. Tomorrow they might show a 30% discount and reduce it to original price."
Another user told on related thread on Reddit - "Van Heusen Slim Fit Men’s 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."
But the shocking fact was the above image of a Soch sari which is exorbitantly priced on Flipkart site when the same can be bought for less than half the price on Soch website itself.
There was this Big Billion Day offer by flipkart where they aimed to do business of more than 1 billion in a single day. The offer opened at 8 am in the morning of 6 Oct 2014 where discounts of up to 80% percent were offered across various categories.
Flipkart has been advertising this offer since quite some days and in the initial opening time on the morning of 6th Oct, many phones went out of stock. In fact, in an attempt to achieve their target, it has been reported that they have dedicated a strength of 10,000 staff for dispatching goods.
It is important for us as consumers to be aware about such marketing gimmicks and take purchasing decision wisely after considering all the factors.
These are some of the examples of Flipkart's bigflop sale and there are many such examples where products are quoted/listed at much higher prices than its regular prices and then discounted so as to make them look as for sale on huge discounts. If you have found something miserable in Big Billion Sale of Flipkart do mention them in comments below.
Sachin Bansal, however claimed the #BigBillionDay was a unprecedented successful online event for the company, with the site registering a billion hits and Flipkart touched $100 million in gross merchandising value in just 10 hours on 6th October 2014.
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