“Yesterday was a big day for us. And we really wanted it to be a great day for you. But at the end of the day, we know that your experience was less than pleasant. We did not live up to the promises we made and for that we are really and truly sorry.”
This apology note from Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal landed in my inbox tonight, just as it did for thousands of other Flipkart customers.
Yesterday Tech in Asia reported that Flipkart’s Big Billion Day had gone horribly wrong: heavily advertised offers were ‘out of stock’ from the very outset; ‘internal server error’ messages greeted customers just when they thought they had found good deals; and the prices of several items were found to have been hiked just before the big discount day – a pen drive was priced at nearly INR50,000 (US$813) and discounted by 95 percent.
Today we followed that up by questioning Flipkart’s claim of a big success at the end of the Big Billion Day – at what price, we asked.
And now, apparently unable to brazen it out any more, Flipkart has come out with a damage control apology, acknowledging point by point what had gone wrong, hoping to stop the vitriol being poured on it in social media by frustrated consumers who felt cheated.
Here’s what the note from Flipkart admitted:
Out-of-stock: “We ran out of stock for many products within a few minutes (and in some cases, seconds) of the sale going live. Most of our special deals were sold out as soon as they went live. We had ensured availability, anywhere from hundreds to a few lakh units for various products, but it was nowhere near the actual demand.”
Price changes: “As we were preparing various deals and promotional pricing in the lead up to the sale, the pricing of several products got changed to their non-discounted rates for a few hours. We realize that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us.”
Cancellations: “We had large numbers of people buying specific products simultaneously. This led to some instances of an order getting over-booked for a product that was sold out just a few seconds earlier. We are working round-the-clock to ensure availability of additional units for these products and will do our level best to ensure that we minimize any cancellations.”
Website crashes: “We realize that the shopping experience for many of you was frustrating due to errors and unavailability of the website at times. We had deployed nearly 5,000 servers and had prepared for 20 times the traffic growth – but the volume of traffic at different times of the day was much higher than this.”
The note concludes with an appeal to customers:
We have worked very hard over the last seven years to earn your trust. Yesterday, we failed that trust. We have learnt some valuable lessons from this and have started working doubly hard to address all the issues that cropped up during this sale.
Flipkart’s main rival Amazon India is gearing up, meanwhile, for its big festival week from October 10 to 16, dubbed ‘Diwali Dhamaka’. The own-goal from Flipkart puts Amazon one up even before its response. As Kartik Hosanagar, professor of ecommerce at The Wharton School, quipped yesterday after the Flipkart fiasco: “It feels a bit like a boxing bout in which one boxer accidentally knocked himself down before the opponent even entered the ring.”
See: Flipkart records $100 million sales on Big Billion Day, but at what price?
Damage control: Flipkart says big sorry after big boo-boo
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