Bangalore: India’s largest e-retailer Flipkart yesterday apologised to millions of its customers a day after its promises of bumper discounts and offers of unbeatable prices on orders placed for plethora of products came a cropper.
“We failed to live up to this promise yesterday (Monday) and would like to apologise to every single customer for our failure,” the city-based e-commerce major said in a mail to all its registered users, many of whom were outraged over its deceptive offers, its portal crashing for hours during the day-long special sales and rejections owing to stocks flying out of shelf in minutes.
Admitting that the company did not live up to the promises made, its co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal said though it was a big day for them, they were sorry that the customers’ experience was less than pleasant. “We are unhappy that we were unable to live up to the expectations of millions who wanted to buy from us and this is not acceptable to us,” the co-founders jointly acknowledged.
Noting that the company had worked hard over the last seven years to earn the trust of its customers, Bansals accepted they had failed the trust reposed in them. “We have learnt some valuable lessons from this (failure) and have started working doubly hard to address the issues that cropped during the sale,” the co-founders said.
Claiming that a record 1.5 million people shopped on its portal, showing unprecedented interest in its products, the company accepted it was 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. More over, the load on our server led to intermittent outages, further impacting your shopping experience on our site,” the Bansals admitted.
Referring to the frequent changes in prices on several products that were on sale, the company said the pricing 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 sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again,” the co-founders reiterated.
IANS
