If you think getting a Xiaomi online is hard here in Malaysia, see what India has to go through

The Xiaomi online sale in India is done via a third party site called Flipkart and it certainly raises a few questions on the legitimacy of Xiaomi’s gone in a flash sales performance. As comparison in other countries, Xiaomi sells their products directly at their Mi Store while in the Philippines, they are partnering with Lazada where it offers one of the best fulfilment with same day delivery.

Before its initial flash sale in India last week, FlipKart had open pre-registration for the Mi 3 and it claimed to have over 100,000 users registered. During sales day, the servers were plagued with issues and those who had taken the effort to pre-register were merely given a chance to join in the queue and not guaranteed a unit.

To make matters worse, they didn’t reveal specific sales figures in the last 2 sales which adds to the frustration of potential buyers. Some were suggesting that only 5,000 units were available during each sales. That’s very little for the 2nd biggest country in the world. In the last sale on Tuesday in India, Xiaomi claims to have insanely sold out their Mi 3 in just 5 seconds. You can watch the video of their Mi 3 page that goes out of stock in just matter of seconds after the break.

For us folks in Malaysia, Xiaomi has recently offered a pre-sale method of acquiring a Mi 3 but the only catch is the waiting time which may take up to 4 weeks. During its initial sales in Malaysia, most buyers had to rush to check out their order with full delivery details in order to secure a unit. Not anymore as Xiaomi appears to have made some changes on its online store, making it easier for anyone to complete their order.

In the recent sales, we noticed that as long as you have successfully add to cart and check out to the delivery details page, your order is pretty much secured. This leaves ample time to fill up your delivery details. Even with Xiaomi boasting a sell out in just a couple of minutes, we only completed our order 40 minutes later and payment was made at 10PM in the evening. So the sold out within minutes or seconds claim isn’t factually correct as the stocks were only “taken” but not actually sold with complete payment. There’s also a likelihood of stocks being taken but never got sold.

What do you guys think of Xiaomi’s flash sales method? Some have praised it as a good way to thwart scalpers and for Mi Fans to boast a sense of exclusivity, while others have mocked it for bad user experience. After all, Xiaomi is doing things differently without having deep pockets for marketing or a large network of retail outlets like other brands. And according to Xiaomi, that’s why it’s possible to price their products ridiculously low.

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