Flipkart’s ‘fake discount’ on shoe goes viral; company says sorry

Mnagalore Today Network-1

Bengaluru: June 7, 2015: Flipkart, one of India’s biggest home-grown e-commerce portals, is facing the heat once again after a picture showing a ‘fake’ discount’ for a pair of wedges on the site has gone viral on social media.

 

The picture above of the Canvera Wedges was taken by Facebook user Mani Shanker Sen who posted it to Flipkart’s Facebook page. The picture shows that the shoe is on a 50 per cent discount and is thus priced Rs 399, but if you look closely at the shoe, you can see that the actual price printed on it is Rs 399. In short, discount is equal to zero and social media is equal to angry with Flipkart.

Sen wrote on Flipkart’s page, “Dear Flipkart Team… When ever we think of online shopping, we definitely check your site first for the product availability. You have built huge brand value in India. But these incidents damage customers’ trust factor, as well as your brand value. Please see the picture attached…”

To Flipkart’s credit they promptly replied to Sen and said that they would rectify the matter. For now, it’s not possible to find Canvera Wedges and the company says the product has already been taken down.

Of course, Flipkart is not the only company to have made pricing errors, be in time of sale or not. The last time social media was this outraged about the pricing of a product was when the Yu Yureka smartphone went on sale on Amazon.co.in.

The Yu Yureka was priced at Rs 8999 but a technical glitch caused the price to show as Rs 12,999 and some users ended up paying more. Amazon had later apologised for the same and returned the extra money to users in the form of a coupon.

In the latest case, it seems the seller had tried to hike up the price online and let’s not forget that Flipkart is not always the official seller. It is a marketplace whether other sellers operate as well.  For now, the issue appears to have been sorted by Flipkart.