As the deals crashed and several products fell short at the drop of a hat, Flipkart invited the wrath of its fans on its biggest day. People on social media called the website ‘Heartbreaker' and ‘Flopkart'
Just imagine. A beautiful bride, after all those hours of decking up at a posh parlour, patiently waiting like a statue for her dream groom! And as the band baja baraat arrive, the only fellow missing at the extravaganza is her dulha! Isn’t she bound to break downIJ While the heartbreak is inevitable, something similar was felt by thousands of people who were so looking forward to indulge in online shopping experience like never before, as promised by Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce websites.
For over two weeks, Flipkart advertised for its Big Billion Day which raised billion hopes among shopaholics as there were discounts across various categories as high up to 80 per cent.
However, the mega sale came to an end within a few hours of its commencement resulting to massive disappointment. Hundreds of netizens took to social networking websites to express their anguish and resentment as deals went out of stock and the website crashed multiple times.
Anupam Saini got so angr that he invented a whole new month. ‘6 October 2014 is a foolish day’ he wrote. Vishal showed his poetic side. “Flipkart Flipkart. Yes Papa. Selling cheaper. Yes Papa. Telling lies. No Papa. Where are the offersIJ Ha Ha Ha.” he commented. Another client Aditya Kumar Nayak was emotionally hurt by the entire episode. “Please yaar. No ullu banaoing. No ullu banaoing (sic),” he wrote.
As usual, Twitter got some funny reactions. Kushal Thakkar @i_kushal wrote, “Flipkart sale playing more hard to get than that ex girlfrnd who suddnly turned hot right aftr u dumped her IJIJIJIJ #bigbillionday @Flipkart (sic).” Akshar @AksharPathak said, “People buy everything online. Upset mall owners run a #BigBillionDay campaign. Shoppers killing each other. Blood everywhere.”
Sixth Sense @cuck00call1ng mentioned, “Kejriwal:I have empirical evidence that all FlipKart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Myntra requests go 2 the same server. Sab mile hue hain. #BigBillionDay (sic).”
Gabbbar Singh wrote, “Xth board: 404 not found. JEE results: 404 not found. CAT reslts: 404 not found. Flipkart sale: 404 not found. life is a quest to find 404.”
Meanwhile, the e-commerce website maintained, “The Big Billion Day is an unprecedented day for us as this is the biggest sale ever in India. With a range of exciting offers on quality products at disruptive prices available throughout the sale period, we have created history in Indian e-commerce. We got a billion hits on our site today and achieved our 24 hour sales target of $100 mn in GMV in just 10 hours.”
However, experts say that the website should have served some disclaimer before the sale or issued ‘first come first serve’ notice indicating the limited stocks. Nonetheless, the entire episode must have taught some lessons to the other websites as well which plan to stage similar dos. After all, social media is where they most score at.