Both Flipkart and Xiaomi are celebrating the flash sales of the
Xiaomi Mi 3 in India - the
handset has been put on sale on the e-commerce website twice now, and
each time, has been completely sold out almost immediately. According to
Xiaomi's official release on the subject, this week's entire Mi 3 stock
was sold out in five seconds, and the company has now sold a total of
20,000 units of the phone.
More Details @ Flipcart full features & Pre Order
However, a lot of potential
customers have been very upset, since they had to pre-register to
purchase the phone, but faced a lot of difficulties such as orders being
cancelled immediately after being booked, or simply finding that the
phone went out of stock in the time it took for the buy button to show
up on their screens. For example, one of our readers, Senthil Kumar
wrote in via comments: "After reviewing your
technical specification, i eagerly plan to buy the phone. Then i have
registered on last Wednesday and further i have tried twice but website
threw that i was registered already. Finally yesterday & today i got
reminder mail from flipkart, then i was eagerly waiting for purchase.
Once i clicked then i got the message that i am not registered. Really
shocked. Within 2 seconds, i tried to buy again with the same account
then i got out of stock message. So, it seems that it's totally fraud
sales. please don't encourage these type of business which makes people
as foolish. So, please stop updating any messages about flipkart and Mi3
phones further. Both of them cheating our entire nation."
Other
readers had similar experiences. Chethan wrote: "These
#flipkart crashing & #Xiomi Mi3 out of stock in minutes stories are
just bogus. it's their brand building tactics... I mean I was watching
the countdown and hit BUY the moment it hit 00:00 & it showed 'Out
of Stock'... come on...!"; Santosh wrote: "Its showing Out of stock at
2:01 pm, when the sale was to start at 2pm.. Is it a joke?"; Manoj
wrote: "The Mi3 sale on Flipkart is a bloody joke. The phone went out of
stock at 14:00 Hrs!!!! Are you kidding Flipkart?".
The
frustration that so many people who went to buy the phone are feeling is
palpable. In light of this negative reaction, Xiaomi's response starts
to look a little tone deaf:
