In recent times, Chinese manufacturing giant, Xiaomi, has been expanding to different markets in the world. The company recently arrived in the UK and to announce its presence, it activated a £1 flash sale for the Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite and Xiaomi Mi A2. Ofcourse such a deal can attract a whole nation and the UK responded just as Xiaomi wanted. However, things quickly went south.
Well, the company offered only 10 units for this flash sale, 5 for each phone. However, it appears that the UK folks were expecting more. At £1, even a 100 units will sell out instantly because you would expect at least a thousand people to click the buy button at the exact time. Nevertheless, the instant expiration of this deal irritated the UK folks and they took it to quite a distance.
Gizchina News of the week
For starters, the Advertising Standards Authority, UK’s regulator of advertising, got a complaint. Someone even went into the details of the website code insinuating that the buy button was just a smoke screen and it was programmed to show out of stock as soon as its clicked. Xiaomi UK sales and marketing director, Wilkin Lee explained that thousands of potential buyers clicked the buy button simultaneously thus the system did a random selection against the first come, first serve which was stated in the Terms & Conditions.
A statement to our Mi Fans: pic.twitter.com/Ij2jmrinaN
— XiaomiUK (@XiaomiUK) November 12, 2018
The company has since expalined via an official statement that it “did not realize that the public associates this term with a very particular type of deal that Xiaomi has run in the past across different global markets, where more than 10 devices were available.”. Xiaomi’s first Authorised Mi Store in the UK will open on November 18th in Westfield, London. The company also cooperates with a couple of stores including Carphone Warehouse.
People are so gullible. As if Xiaomi would give away tons of phones for £1. It was always a marketing stunt
Too good to be true.
They had opened a Xiaomi store in town. For the first 10 mins you could get any one item at 10 bucks. Of course… that is… if you manage to get to checkout at the register in time and survive the crowd storming in and are okay with staying overnight to secure a spot.
I once almost got trampled once and pushed through a glass wall at an event like that. I managed to get the deal, but I’ve sworn off ever doing something like that again.
And with online stuff? Ha, forget it. Even on Gearbest and stuff, there’s people running scripts and stuff. Unless you’re one of these programmers, forget having a fair chance at obtaining one. If there’s any to be had. Indeed, I imagine it just being a smokescreen and there’s never any being sold at those prices.