Yesterday (06/10/2014) was a very BIG day for ecommerce sites in India. They called it #BigBillionDay, #OnlineShoppingDhamaka and #CheckSnapdealToday with a huge national full front page print campaign. They try to copy or recreate the sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday that happens in US before Christmas, here it was Diwali.

The impact was very obvious in offices, way we see facebook tab anytime on every colleague’s screen in office that day everyone was on flipkart and was shouting, “listen to this deal..!” Deals like, 16 gb pen drive for Re.1 (0.016$), Samsung tab for Rs 1,390(23$), JBL Headphones for Rs 99(1.61$), 2 TB drive for Rs 600(10$), Nokia X for Rs 700(11.5$) etc. I also got a deal from them, motorola moto e for Rs 1,500(25$) while actual cost of the phone was Rs 6,999 (114$). And a sweet confirmation message saying that you can manage your order at fkrt.it/VQqs4uuuuN. For few hours I also thought “the force is with me!” :P

But later got a message from them with sincere apology and a refund of Rs.1500, the same amount will be credited to my bank account in next 5–7 days. After sometime got another message from them saying you’ll get a bonus amount worth Rs.500(8.15$) too to your flipkart wallet.

Now I understand what ERROR 500 really means.Not only me.

Its was frustrating and would have appreciated if it would have been handled personally. The excitement of buying my first smartphone and that too in such an amazing deal has given a good high to me but suddenly it got crashed. May be if there apology gesture would have been expressed in single communication it would have been a different story. Definitely they didn't had any disaster management plan for such big event which I believe was not wise.