Snapdeal leaves shoppers high and dry on sales day

NEW DELHI: Snapdeal, one of the country's largest online retailers, did a Flipkart on Tuesday, failing to deliver on its promises of big discounts and speedy deliveries on its Savings Day sale. The mess-up evoked the ire of hundreds of online shoppers, who took to social media to accuse the e-tailer of cheating them in the name of a 'big sale'.

"After spending crores to advertise for today's sale, Snapdeal payment checkout page is not working," tweeted Rohit Bhardwaj.

With bitter memories of cancelled orders, out-of-stock products and website crashes on Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale, online shoppers were hoping that its rivals would have worked out a seamless strategy to handle surges in demand.

But at 7am on Tuesday, when Snapdeal started its sale, shoppers were confronted with numerous surprises including a blank site, discounted products that were conspicuous by their absence and checkout pages that did not work. It reminded them of Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale when millions of online shoppers were left high and dry despite the e-tailer raking in Rs 600 crore in 10 hours. Later, Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal tendered a public apology for not meeting the expectations of their consumers.

"Snapdeal cannot get its site to open on their sale day. At least Flipkart got that right," tweeted The Greater Fool.

While a Snapdeal spokesperson refused to comment on the day's proceedings, industry leaders said that e-tailers in India and their logistics partners are not yet ready to handle huge spikes in demand that are usually witnessed during flash sales and festivals. "You cannot build so much of extra capacity that it will remain unused for the rest of the year," said Praveen Sinha, co-founder of Jabong, an online fashion and lifestyle retailer.