The Big Boring Online Sale: Damp Squib Much?
Flipkart or Amazon? Laptop or Phone? All the juice on the big online sales, right here on this live blog.
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Amazon’s 1kg Gold Challenge
A little jig to go with your shopping?
Amazon has its customers shaking a leg in between what they hope would be some hours of binge shopping. The best one wins a kg of gold.
The Silent Sites
Quick tip for a disappointed few.
Your cart emptied out before you could press buy? There are sales on other sites as well. The less noisy ones.
Jabong gives an extra 25% on top of an already existing sale. So this one actually works out pretty cheap! App-only, of course.
Con-stant Scrutiny
Less than a day into their big ‘app-only’ sale and Flipkart is facing a lot more backlash.
Customer actually finding merchandise being sold for cheaper ON the site.
Flipkart on BIG Sale?
So we did a little digging of our own and here’s the results!
Flipkart would like us to believe that it’s the one stop shop for all things ‘fashion’ today but turns out they aren’t even giving you the biggest bargain!
Here’s the same Benetton dress on three ‘on sale’ portals today.
MRP is Rs 2999.
Flipkart wants Rs 1489. Myntra wants Rs 1199. Amazon gives it for Rs 899.70!
Twitter Happy?
We’re diving into Twitter to get more feedback on the ‘big’ sales. Share your views @TheQuint.
Flipkart Claims 10 Lakh Unit Sales in 10 Hours
First 10 hours of their sale and Flipkart claim to have made some big bucks already. We’re hearing that their big bosses in Bangalore have all converged in on one room, the “Big Billion Day War Room”.
War it might just turn into, if the portal continues to just make it a one way traffic.
Happy shoppers < Angry shoppers.
Anyone else getting an empty cart after all the hard work?
Myntra’s Discount Bait
Myntra is a ‘clothing and accessories’ portal and they know their audience well.
What’s a shopper love the most? Discounts! And so, their sales are slotted simply according to the level of discount you can avail.
Click 70% -- Choose ‘filter’-- Select ‘brand’-- And you can wade through the unneeded heap of sarees that always seem to be on ‘lowest price’.
The Amazon Format
Everyone going about their sales in different ways.
Amazon still using with the old school ‘get lucky’ format. Big deals on a mixed array of products. The line refreshes every few hours and if you are logged in, and you like. Amazon make moolah.
The Sale Schedule
For the not so savvy shopper, here’s something to save your time.
Flipkart is going about this sale in different phases.
Today is only going to be about clothes. Moves onto curtains and belans from tomorrow and then it’s time to buy your phones from Wednesday.
Is Snapdeal Snapping on Flipkart’s Heels?
As always, Snapdeal turns up to rain on someone else’s pre-planned, massively-advertised sale.
Flipkart spent the big bucks on these ‘Big Billion Days’ spamming you with emails, alerts and even snail mails. But they somehow made the choice to go live on a Tuesday.
So what does Flipkart’s biggest competition Snapdeal do? They go on sale on Monday!
So guess who’s winning the internet battle?
Of course, we do know that Twitter trends can be manipulated. Just pay a bunch of people to tweet like crazy. That simple.
However, we’re in no way saying that Snapdeal is pulling that fast one.
Is The App Even Opening?
Last night, the Flipkart app had teething troubles and other e-commerce websites such as NDTV Gadgets reported that the sale got off to a rocky start.
But when The Quint downloaded the app just now, it worked fine. Most people in fact don’t seem to be having trouble using the app. There are of course, a number of those who say that Flipkart marked up prices before the sale went on.
App-only Anyone?
So here’s the deal. We know Myntra is an app-only operation, but for this one, Flipkart has chosen to take their sale just to their phone audience.
Amazon though stays loyal to their desktop buyers (my mother). So choose your poison.
Hello Shopping Day!
Who set a 12 o’clock alarm on that Monday night? Who deleted extra apps from their phone to ensure quick processing? Who (if any) had a wish list prepped in each of the apps?
Who’s disappointed?
Flipkart, Amazon and Flipkart’s little baby Myntra are all live on their sales. It’s the pre-Diwali bumper bonanza, or that’s what they had you believing.