There is a woman who won the show with her patience and some winning tricks. You can also follow the same tomorrow if you don’t want to miss the deal.
Buying a Xiaomi phone over Flipkart is like a gigantic task, which if completed, can send you to the cloud nine. Last three rounds of Xiaomi Mi 3 sales in India can be termed as ‘flash sales’ and some winning tricks are badly necessary to win this almost-impossible game.
Social media platforms got flooded with complaints from customers that Flipkart and Xiaomi lacked management and organization as supply could never meet the demand chain. The third round was the most heartbreaking one as within 1 second all the phones just vanished. But there is one woman, a definite winner, who managed to grab an Mi 3 for herself. The winning soul, Sowmya Rao, shared the full account in a tweet, detailing about how she managed to beat the rush. Here’s how Rao described her experience:
“How I bought the #XiaomiMi3 on #Flipkart
1) Registered early and made sure my husband also did
2) Made sure default delivery address was correct on both accounts
3) Logged into my account on Firefox and husband’s on Chrome at about 10: 30 am for 2 pm sale
4) Other users said key was clicking as soon as countdown ran down so positioned cursor on both windows on the middle ‘minute box’
5) Memorised card details for quick payment
6) Practised the ‘alt-tab, click’ routine between my account on Firefox and husband’s account on Chrome – fixed position of cursor so that there would be no need to move it between the browser windows
7) When countdown ended, the BUY button was a couple of CMs ABOVE the countdown box!!! Quickly moved to click on it- then alt-tabbed and clicked again on chrome
8) Success on Firefox and none on Chrome
9) Noticed that at around 1:30 or so, the countdown boxes between the two browsers were different (Chrome was slower than Firefox), so refreshed the page frequently and once at 1 min left.
10) Message said it was on cart – so I opened another window (was logged in already on Firefox) and went to cart
11) At one point, I tried adding next-day delivery and page crashed, so decided to not add any extra options (gift-wrap etc) because didn’t want to risk losing the order
12) After making payment successfully for the first time, the page didn’t move from the ‘payment successful’ page to ‘order successful’ page, Went back to cart and followed same process – again requiring numerous f5 clicks and patience
13) Made payment again and this time clicked on the ‘take me to Flipkart’ button’ immediately
14) Finally got the confirmation
15) Checked my ‘orders’ page a few second later to confirm
16) Posted on twitter!
17) Total time taken = 2 pm to 2:32 pm
18) Now going to start process of getting refund for the first order! Sigh.
Tips:
1) Try to use 2 accounts
2) I had good luck with Firefox – make of that what you will
3) If you don’t have a delivery address saved, make sure you input an address and save it as the default – will ensure quick order process
4) Memorise your payment details
5) Click as soon as countdown ends
6) Open multiple windows once its in your cart and try to rapidly move through the 4 order clicks (order – address – payment – confirmation)
7) Don’t wait to add ‘next day delivery’ or ‘gift-wrap’ etc – just keep moving on default settings quickly
8) Continue ordering until you see a successful order confirmation (don’t stop even if payment is made, but no order conf ). Keep hitting f5 (refresh). Double-check your orders page once you get a confirmation.
9) Take multiple screenshots for reference and refund, if required
Good luck!”
So it’s hence proved that the lady worked a lot to get her phone and the experience was not at all a smooth one. Now Xiaomi and Flipkart should get fully-packed for the next round of sales on 12 August with much better preparation and homework.
