The Flipkart and Xiaomi Redmi 1S Flash Sale According to My Experience

Xiaomi had once again partnered with Flipkart to sell its newly launched Redmi 1S in India. Around 40,000 units of the Redmi 1S were imported by Xiaomi and the flash sale was scheduled at 2 Pm yesterday.
As usual i had registered for the sale a week before and yesterday i logged into my Flipkart account 15 minutes before the flash sale was about to begin. In the meanwhile i updated the shipping details and added my credit card details in order to make the payment quickly.

Everything was perfect on my side and i kept waiting until the countdown ended. As soon as the countdown ended, a buy now button appeared and i clicked on it. To my surprise, i had successfully secured a Redmi 1S for me and Flipkart showed me the following message.

However it took another 2 minutes for the phone to be added to my cart and finally a button to my cart appeared on the page. I was happy that i was able to secure myself one unit of the phone while competing with more than 1,00,000 customers. Now i had 24 hours until i could make the payment for the phone.
Everything was fine until this, but to my dismay when i opened my cart, i found it empty. I thought it might be a glitch and Instantly i sent a message to Flipkart customer support and i hoped that my problem will be addressed quickly. I tried logging out of my account and signing in again to check whether my order had appeared or not, but this didn’t make any difference, my cart was still empty.

So after another 2 hours i sent another mail to Flipkart regarding my problem and eventually after numerous try i decided to give it up.
Surprisingly around 7 pm in the evening i got a confirmation email from Flipkart stating that the Redmi 1S has been added to my cart. I logged into my flipkart account and i was happy to see that my cart was showing the number “3” beside it. I clicked on my cart and lo behold it was still empty, however the cart was still showing that there were 3 items in it. Which should include the phone itself and the screen protector and mini sim adapter that Flipkart was giving away for free.
I sent another email to Flipkart customer support hoping they would help me fix this but all the mails were sent in vain as i never received any reply from them. Its already 12 hours since the Flipkart flash sale commenced yesterday and my cart still shows three items in it but when i open it, its still empty. I haven’t received any reply from Flipkart to any of the emails that i had sent.
Never the less I am happy that around 38,000 customers were able to purchase the Redmi 1S yesterday. However there were more than 1,00,000 other buyers who were left disappointed.  For me its a different situation, i was lucky enough to have the phone added to my cart, but unfortunately i can’t purchase it since my cart shows empty.
The Flipkart customer support has shown no interest in my mails and now i have nowhere else go and complain about my problems. This is not the first time i had problem with Flipkart’s flash sale model. Previously i had registered myself for the Xiaomi Mi3 flash sale and i didn’t stand a chance to purchase it as the phone was sold within seconds.
Well that was my experience with the Xiaomi Redmi 1S flash sale on Flipkart and with all that i have experienced it shows that Flipkart’s flash sale model is a bad example of driving sales. Instead of the flash sale, Flipkart should consider selling the phone on a first come first basis only when the customer has paid for it. This way people won’t have to wait for days in order to purchase the phone and get disappointed when they fail to secure one in the flash sale.
Last but not the least, one major question that arises is, how successful was the flash sale? Well, provided that there were 38000 units of the Redmi 1S available and more than 2,50,000 registered users for the flash sale. Anyhow at least more than 1,00,000 people could not have secured the phone and would have been dissapointed. While Flipkart sold all its inventory of the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and earned its commission on them, there were more than 1,00,000 other registered users who were left disappointed. Ultimately i can come to the conclusion that Flipkart might consider yesterdays sale as successful but for the consumers it was once again an epic fail.
If you have any similar experience with the Flipkart Redmi 1S sale yesterday, please let me know about them through the comments below.
Update: Finally the phone appeared in my cart an hour before the reservation time for my Redmi 1S was about to end. Fortunately i checked the Flipkart app around 11:30 in the night and found that the phone has appeared in cart. Instantly i made the payment and now the phone is expected to be shipped by the 12th of this month and the expected delivery date is by 27th of this month.