India’s
online shopping giants will all be vying for customers’ attention this
week with massive publicity around their festive season sale events.
Snapdeal was the first to kick off with a promotion called Electronics
Monday, promising fabulous offers and discounts on products ranging from
smartphones to kitchen appliances.
A small number of the deals
caught our attention, such as the 16GB and 64GB
iPhone 6 at their lowest ever prices (without cashback offer) and very
tempting Xiaomi Mi Pad which also had a healthy chunk cut out of its cost.
(Also see: Snapdeal Diwali Sale: The Best Electronics Monday Deals)
While
Snapdeal has been able to cope with the massive load, with the site
and the apps continuing to work fine – no small achievement in itself –
everything else was not as exciting. Gadgets 360 has monitored the
Electronics Monday sale through the day and has found several cases in
which pre-sale prices seem to have been artificially inflated in order
to make the discounted deals seem more appealing than they actually are.
Several products are being promoted at prices not too far off from
their everyday retail prices.
(Also see: Snapdeal Electronics Monday Sale Part of Our ‘World Cup Final’, Says Chandrasekaran)
Many
of the phones on offer are actually quite old, and as such, there are
better products available even when factoring in a minor discount. For
example, the Micromax Canvas Spark was launched in April this year at
Rs. 4,999. Snapdeal offered it today for Rs. 4,799 but marked up the MRP
to show Rs. 7,249 for a claimed 34 percent off. The Karbonn Titanium
S200 HD is also on sale for Rs. 4,799 and also launched for Rs. 4,999,
but more recently, in September this year. Its MRP has been inflated
less, to Rs. 5,990, for a purported 20 percent discount though you’re
actually getting only Rs. 200 off.
The Micromax Canvas Fire 4 and
Micromax Canvas Nitro 2 were on sale for Rs. 4,999 and Rs. 7,999
respectively, which are reasonable compared to their launch MRPs of Rs.
6,999 and Rs. 10,990 respectively. However, street prices tend to slide
after launch and so these low rates are not anything to get excited
about. Perhaps to counter that effect, Snapdeal hiked the apparent MRPs
to Rs. 8,299 and Rs. 12,249 and is making the discount seem more
significant.
The same effect could be seen in listings for the Yu
Yunique, which has been sold only through controlled channels so far,
allowing the company to eliminate street price variations. Without a
lower MOP to claim as its own, Snapdeal has again pushed up the MRP to
Rs. 6,999 from the clearly stated launch price of Rs. 4,999 in order to
fib a 29 percent discount. The actual benefit to buyers? Zero.
Absolutely nothing.
The Intex Cloud Pace was listed for Rs. 5,099
today which was supposedly 38 percent lower than the MRP of Rs. 8,290.
Except that the actual MRP is Rs. 6,999 as we noted at the time of its
launch in August this year. If you think it’s only low-cost Android
models that are affected by this wave of price revisions, we also found a
Microsoft Lumia 640 XL listing which happily claimed that the offer
price of Rs. 13,499 was a steal, at 21 percent off. Pants on fire,
Snapdeal. The phone in question was launched for Rs. 15,799.
In
many cases, these are still good prices to pay for smartphones. Snapdeal
could simply promote its everyday low prices without resorting to
artificial inflation. Maybe it just wants to get rid of stocks of
unpopular products such as the HTC Re Cam, which is listed at Rs. 5,490
for Electronics Monday, but inflated from its actual MRP of Rs. 9,990 to
Rs. 10,990 to seem like a better deal.
By far the most
egregiously misleading and disingenuous offer had to be the listing for
Asus’ GeForce GTX 960 with 2GB of RAM. The card officially launched in January for
Rs. 19,500 but its street price was always around Rs. 16,500.
Snapdeal was promoting it for Rs. 15,889 today which is not a bad deal at all
– except for the “36 PERCENT OFF” label against the entirely fictitious
MRP of Rs. 25,000.
As we’ve stated, there were some interesting
and genuinely tempting deals today. In addition to those already
covered, we found a WD Elements 1TB portable
hard drive fors Rs. 3,699 and a 2TB Toshiba Canvio model for Rs. 5,675.
While not record-breaking, it isn’t easy to find these products at
these prices and anyone who needs some portable storage should pick them
up – just don’t get too excited about the claimed discount values.
The
Intel Compute Stick, publicly launched for Rs. 9,999, was selling on
Snapdeal today for Rs. 8,999 with a free wireless keyboard and mouse – another pretty compelling deal. So why did the site have to retrospectively make
up an MRP of Rs. 12,900? This package clearly could have been sold on
its own merits.
Snapdeal is not alone in jacking up MRPs in order
to make its prices – we’ve seen this before from multiple major players.
It’s a sad reflection of state of the market that retailers need to
manufacture hysteria on such a scale, and also that they get away with
it.