Xiaomi has also held such sales in Indian smartphone market during the festive season, where a few of its devices are available at Re 1. But, in the UK, the sale left the customers miffed. Much like what Xiaomi does in its Re 1 flash sales in India, the company made only 10 units of its Android smartphones available at GBP 1. As a result of this, the units were sold out within seconds of the sale beginning, just like it happens in India. However, customers in the United Kingdom associate ‘Flash Sale’ with something that has more than 10 units on discount. And this was what created a furore. Xiaomi tweeted an apology saying, “We can confirm that 10 customers have purchased a Xiaomi device for GBP 1. Of the thousands who clicked ‘buy’ simultaneously, our system randomly selected the winners, and he or she should have been able to add this item to the shopping cart and pay for this handset at GBP 1. No changes to the T&C were made that impacted the promotion itself in any way.”
— Xiaomi UK – #From10ToInfinity (@XiaomiUK) November 12, 2018 The company further added, “@XiaomiUK would like to apologise for any misunderstanding.” According to a report in BBC, the ads watchdog in the UK has received a complaint and is thinking over whether an investigation is required or not. The report says that the Xiaomi did not mention on the sales page that only a limited number of unit are being sold in the ‘flash sale’. Instead one could only find this information in a different landing page which detailed terms and conditions. It is also worth noticing that the link for this page was in the footer of the website. A Twitter user has alleged that the script of the website shows that the ‘Buy Now’ button on the products that were meant to be on sale was set to automatically switch to ‘Out of Stock’ and it did not check for stock limits when the timer went off. Xiaomi is also said to have held a similar sale in Spain last year and it offered a total of 50 units at EUR 1. Image courtesy: Reuters
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