Flipkart offer apologies for flip-flop sale

NEW DELHI: Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart today apologised for the glitches encountered during yesterday's 'Big Billion Day' sale, admitting its "failure" in living upto the expectations of its customers.

Acknowledging that it was not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event, Flipkart promised to come better prepared next time.

"Everything that we have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of our customer's trust and faith...We failed to live up to this promise yesterday and would like to apologise once again to every single customer for our failure," Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal said in a joint e-mail to customers.

The e-commerce firm said 1.5 million people shopped at its portal yesterday to take benefit of the one-day sale scheme. The company claimed it sold products worth over Rs 600 crore in just 10 hours under the scheme.

"While we stand humbled by the sheer faith that such a large number of customers have shown in us, we are unhappy that we were unable to live up to the expectations of millions more who wanted to buy from us yesterday. And this is not acceptable to us," the founders said.

"And though we saw unprecedented interest in our products and traffic like never before, we also realised that we were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event. We didn't source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements," the founders said.

They added that the load on server led to intermittent outages that impacted shopping experience on the website.

Here is the full text of the mail

Dear Customer,

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.

It took enormous effort from everyone at Flipkart, many months of preparation and pushing our capabilities and systems to the limit to be able to create this day. We were looking at fulfilling the dreams of millions of Indian consumers through deals and offers we had painstakingly put together for months.

And though we saw unprecedented interest in our products and traffic like never before, we also realized that we were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event. We didn't source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements. To add to this, the load on our server led to intermittent outages, further impacting your shopping experience on our site.

An unprecedented 1.5 million people shopped at Flipkart yesterday. While we stand humbled by the sheer faith that such a large number of customers have shown in us, we are unhappy that we were unable to live up to the expectations of millions more who wanted to buy from us yesterday.

And this is not acceptable to us.

Delighting you, and every single one of our customers, is absolutely the top most priority for Flipkart and 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.

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 realise that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us. We are truly sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again.

Out-of-stock Issues We ran out of the stock for many products within a few minutes (and in some cases, seconds) of the sale going live. For example, 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. We promise to plan much better for future promotions and ensure that we minimise the out-of-stock issues.

Cancellations We had large number 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 ago. 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 minimise any cancellations.

Website Issues ?We realise that the shopping experience for many of you was frustrating due to errors and unavailability of the website at times. We had deployed nearly 5000 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. We are continuing to significantly scale up all our back end systems so that we do a much, much better job next time.

Everything that we have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of our customer's trust and faith. This is why we come to work each day and continue to remain extremely passionate about building the best possible customer experience for Indian consumers. We failed to live up to this promise yesterday and would like to apologise once again to every single customer for our failure.

Thank you.

Sachin and Binny

Flipkart 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 mail said.

"We are continuing to significantly scale up all our back end systems so that we do a much, much better job next time," the e-mail said.

Customers have complained about getting products at different prices than it was displayed.

Flipkart also acknowledged the price change complaints after the pricing of several products got changed to a higher non-discounted rates for a few hours.

"We realise that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us. We are truly sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again," the e-mail said.

Flipkart's founders said that many of the products went out of stock within seconds the sale started.

"We had ensured availability, anywhere from hundreds to a few lakh units for various products, but it was nowhere near the actual demand. We promise to plan much better for future promotions and ensure that we minimise the out-of-stock issues," the e-mail said.

The Bansals said they are working to ensure availability of additional units for the products that went out of stock and promised to do "level best to ensure that we minimise any cancellations".