Users slams 'Flopkart' with barbs, sign out with sarcasm

It's near-impossible to book a Tatkal ticket on the IRCTC website, goes a long-standing joke. And going by the thousands of tweets slamming Flipkart, it seems the e-commerce giant was not far behind on its 'Big Billion Day' sale.

Despite its much publicised campaign and revamped user interface, the website was not accessible in several instances; numerous users could not check out their purchases successfully; and the nearly-impossible-to-believe prices such as a 16GB pen drive for Rs 1 showed 'out of stock', going by e-shoppers flooding social media with their woes.

User @shahrcasm took a picture of a newspaper ad showing a set of headphones for Rs 99, and then a real-time screenshot from the site that showed the product being sold on Flipkart for Rs 4,699.

However, the company claimed that the event was a huge success, saying in a statement, 'Our teams and sellers worked days and nights to make this sale a success - and our efforts paid off. We got a billion hits on our site today (Monday) and achieved our 24 hour sales target of $100 mn in GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) in just 10 hours.'

But frustrated shoppers begged to differ about the 'success' part of it, unleashing sarcasm-tinged barbs about 'FlopKart'. Social analytics engine Topsy pegged at 30,201 the number of tweets with the word 'Flipkart' in one day (not counting replies and retweets).

Parthiben Elango, a software engineer, was of the opinion that the e-commerce giant first had to get its math right. 'The site is offering a Rs 1,200 product for `900 and calling it a flat 48 per cent discount,' he observed.

Another techie, Raghavendra S, said he logged in at 8 am sharp, when the sale was set to commence, only to find several products already sold out.

Other users on Reddit forum observed that the prices of several products had been jacked up before the sale. User rahultheinvader warned fellow Redditors, 'Stay away from the books section. Last week I bought 'The Lives of Others' from Flipkart for Rs 400. Today it's being sold for Rs 600.' Twitter user @Surnell drew similar comparisons with a microwave oven, observing that the before sale price had been lower.

Industry-watchers are of the opinion that it was a stunt-gone-awry to draw people to the site. 'When analysts value e-commerce companies, the valuation at this point is not based on profits but based on number of customers hitting the site.

So, Flipkart wants to make people type 'Flipkart' in the address bar and not Amazon or Snapdeal,' charged Ajoy Prabhakar, a chartered accountant who is now pursuing an MBA. Chartered accountant R Vivek Krishna opined that the move was aimed at penetrating Tier-II cities.

Whatever the numbers turn out to be, the mood of its customers seemed to be reflected in an acerbic tweet by @clumsy_singh: Common sense just ran out of stock #flipkart.