Flash sale seems to be the buzzword these days. With Flipkart gaining plenty of publicity and success with it, Amazon and Micromax set out to do just that with the Yu Yureka. Except, they screwed up, badly!
The company closed registrations due to the overwhelming response of over 3 lakh registrations for the flash sale. According to Amazon and Micromax, ten thousand units of the phone sold out in 3 seconds leaving many customers high and dry. This led to negative sentiments among the public and the unsuccessful buyers took to social media to vent their anger.
Although, the sale was in news for completely different reasons. Two specific events marred the whole occasion and generated plenty of negative publicity for the two firms. The first instance was when the price of the phone shot up to INR 12,499 from the expected INR 8,999 for some buyers. This seems like a small error but some of the users were actually charged the higher amount after checking out.
This was even acknowledged by Amazon who apologized through a twitter post for the same and gave assurances to the affected buyers.
The second controversy was even bigger. A blogger who was unable to get his hands on the new phone shared some details about the so-called lightning deal. He obtained them by invoking Amazon’s API.
The API revealed that only 3,000 units were available, and only 88 percent was claimed. If this is indeed proven true, then Amazon and Micromax will have plenty of face saving to do.
However, a separate report states that the sales was not rigged and that Amazon put up the reported amount of 10,000 units for sale. It further explains that the lightning deals at Amazon are split in various fragments. Going by this, the blogger might have caught hold of a fragment of the total Yureka Lightning Deals, which explains why it was limited to just 3,000 units.
Even after reading the above report, we feel that something’s still not right. For all its justifications, it cannot explain the fact that only 88 percent of the total capacity was claimed. This should be enough to put the phone back in stock. Prima facie, it looks as if the blogger is correct about the matter, unless Micromax and Amazon can give a official statement clarifying the same.
