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Comment by bilalhusain | Hacker News Reader

I am sure they weren't deliberately tricking the customers, instead it is their incompetence and immaturity showing up. They couldn't handle the commotion and steps taken to handle the load backfired (A completely made up example can be that they started the crashed servers but in panic forgot to apply the discount configuration). Disclosure: I worked at Flipkart. I felt that employees are immature.

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I do agree that server crashes and products disappearing from the cart might be technical issues, they weren't able to handle (either from incompetence or other reasons).

But, if you go through my links, you will see that they were indeed deliberately tricking customers. Price tracking websites show that most Flipkart on-sale products' prices were hiked to double their original pricing and then discounts were applied. In one case, a printer was hiked from Rs. 10000 to Rs. 50000 and then sold at a 'discounted' Rs. 11000. Apart from this, they silently increased sale price when adding products to cart, and cancelled orders which people had gotten for bargain prices.

In addition, they also had numerous examples where their claimed discount percentage was not the one that was applied to the product. A discount of 3% was advertised as discount of 10%, 40 Rs off was advertised as 500 Rs off, etc.

All this has managed to completely put me off Flipkart. Prior to this I was a very happy Flipkart customer, and would preferentially order stuff from Flipkart even if it was available on Amazon for marginally lower prices. Even though I did not personally experience any of the Big Billion Day issues, the way Flipkart has handled this 'sale', has left me totally disgusted with them. I think, I'll stick to Amazon/Snapdeal from now on.

Exactly same thoughts. I was too very happy flipkart customer untill now and always recommended flipkart as one of the most reliable e-commerce site to others but not now.

When they cancelled my LED TV order in just 2 hours (it was my only order) and instantly increased the price, even then i didn't mind it much. But today in morning when i found out that the same thing happened with many many customers, i am sure it was not unintentional.

This happened to me https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4697507053002&set=a....

Article on cancelling of orders on DNA http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-flipkart-cancels-order-...

All the negative stories and tweets in the world won't make a difference. Their prices(that only they can offer at the scale they operate at) and marketing budget will nullify it as Walmart and Amazon have already proven in the past.

This would be true if Flipkart did not have viable competitors. This is most definitely not the case. Snapdeal is another Indian e-tailer and the global e-commerce juggernaut Amazon also has an Indian site, both of which offer cheaper prices than Flipkart on a vast majority of items.

When I can get the same product for nearly the same price from Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart, why should I go with Flipkart (in light of the negative stories)?

except those stories tell you those prices are FICTION and your order will get cancelled

They actually were deliberately tricking the customers. They are known for doing this. Actually Amazon.in is hitting them hard with excellent and transparent pricing, great customer service (at least from Indian standards) and that is making them desperate.

Source: I've been a customer for years and have been watching them closely :-)

I have seen Amazon.in silently adding prices during checkout (deliberate or not I can't say ofcourse). I haven't experienced Flipkart adding prices during checkout, but the prices do fluctuate while browsing over the span of a day.

I would only be able to say we have had different experiences. But in my case Amazon changes prices only after I leave the item in cart for days. And sometimes the change is +ve, sometimes -ve.

With Flipkart it feels like I am in a pricing-availability labyrinth.

And though users are frustrated, they've tasted this huge volume success with Xiaomi so it doesn't take much for them to repeat the same #FlashSale across their product category.

Exactly. Initially I thought Xiaomi/Flipkart were genuinely selling whatever phones they could make for India. But when the numbers started to come in then I realise, shit it was just marketing gimmick.

There were several people that took screenshots of the advertized things going 'Out of Stock' even BEFORE the sale officially began. They might actually be deceiving people? We'd know in coming few days.

Flipkart is immature? It is the largest e-commerce companies in India.

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