Smartphone flash sales are currently the hottest thing in the Indian e-commerce scene. These flash sales concern phones sold exclusively by a specific e-merchant, and stocks are limited. The limited stock is a part that attracts buyers, and almost all of these smartphones also come at a bargain price.

Amazon, along with Yu Televentures (a subsidiary of Micromax), held a flash sale for the new Yu Yureka smartphone on Tuesday with only 10,000 units in stock. The online retail giant first accepted registrations from users who wanted to buy the Yureka smartphone, which saw more than three lakh registrations according to Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma. Amazon went the Lightning Deals route to sell the smartphone, with sales limited to those who signed up for the device.

As with all flash sales, some people are lucky while others feel offended that they can’t get their hands on the device. Some potential customers couldn’t even access the website on desktop or mobile for a few minutes when the sale went live. A potential customer even claimed that Amazon only had around 3,000 units to sell during the sale. When asked about this, Micromax denied this, but Amazon did not respond to questions. But is it possible that an online retail giant like Amazon would simply make the figure 10,000 units in stock?

Amazon and Yureka claimed to have registered around 300,000 potential customers for the sale, but it’s highly unlikely that every single one of them will show up for the sale. Some customers even choose to leave a Lightning Deal after claiming it in the first place. But even if half of the registered customers showed up, the sale would still have been closed in seconds. That’s what happened.

So what went wrong for customers? Let’s first see how Amazon’s Lightning Deals work. Amazon lists a specific product on sale for a limited time during one of these sales. Each sale includes a specific number of products, and if a customer wishes to purchase them, they must claim the offer by adding the product to their cart and checkout within 15 minutes. If they fail to make payment within 15 minutes, the product is removed from the customer’s cart.

Then there is a waiting list since some people will make the payment within 15 minutes. Once all offers have been added to users’ carts, Amazon forms a queue and assigns customers a waitlist number, along with an indicator of how likely they are to get their hands on. the offer. “Bad” indicates that there is a long queue and the stock is about to be exceeded. “Good” indicates that the customer might just be able to take the offer. So what could have happened with the sale of Yu Yureka?

With the Yureka sale, Amazon sold the phone using the same Lightning Deals concept. But if there had been a single Lightning Deal for 10,000 units, the waiting list could also have been very long. Customers would end up waiting several minutes, or probably up to an hour, before they could access the offer. It is therefore likely that Amazon has divided the entire stock into several Lightning offers. This could be done to ensure a smooth checkout and waitlist process for customers.

If so, then the potential client Abhay Rana entered was a fragment of the total Yureka Lightning offers, which is why it was limited to only 3,000 units.

That wasn’t the only problem with the sale. Some customers even reported seeing the full price of the device, showing how they grabbed the product page in the middle of a Lightning Deal expiring. Amazon released a statement this morning on Twitter saying they are looking after customers who ended up paying the full amount due to the error. Why would Amazon acknowledge up to an error, but not comment on the number of phones sold?

Amazon and Yureka must have spent a pretty decent amount of money promoting the sale and the device as a whole. It just doesn’t make sense for either company to lie about the inventory situation on the very first day of the sale. That said, we’re still awaiting an official word from Amazon to resolve the issue – something that probably won’t happen, as Amazon wouldn’t want to give away too many technical fixes for its offerings.

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