While the news about Snapdeal buyout is still on the air, they might have lost millions overnight. The incident associated with this loss happened a couple of weeks back and might not be their first blunder. However, this glitch might have brought a smile to the faces of customers who were fed up with their bad service. Let’s see how exactly this glitch happened and an estimate of how much the glitch cost them.
The Prologue
A usual sale day on Snapdeal with an added instant discount from a known bank on selected products. Someone from a well-known deal website finds that the discount is getting applied on a certain type of convertible e-gift vouchers. Soon, a deal goes live about this discount, owing to the fact that the converted voucher can be redeemed at most online shopping portals. As a customary, many online shoppers who were looking for discounts bought this deal. The products were delivered within one hour to their e-mail and many shopped merrily on their favourite portals. What happened one week later will drop your jaw.
The Glitch
The first glitch and it was the discount on the e-gift voucher itself. Snapdeal notices a huge amount of orders on this particular product and finds about this discount glitch. So they started cancelling both fulfilled and unfulfilled orders in bulk. The second glitch occurred few days past the order cancellations, their system initiated refunds for cancelled orders. Internally, they then initiated disabling the delivered gift vouchers and converted vouchers.
The Loss
If you’ve read between the lines, you got it already, if not read on. Let’s see how these glitches affected a single purchase and then an estimate of total loss. Consider a customer buying the e-gift voucher worth Rs 6500 for Rs 5850 with 10% instant discount from the bank. He redeems this voucher on another shopping portal (for eg. Amazon) and buys a product worth Rs 6500. Later due to the series of glitches Snapdeal cancels and refunds him the amount paid for the voucher. For this single order, Snapdeal lost almost twice the amount ie Rs 12350, which includes refund and seller payout. Since the deal and glitch went unnoticed over a day, hundreds of orders could have been placed and delivered. I.e., for hundred orders, Rs 12,35,000 loss and this could easily reach over millions or crores.
Epilogue
Customers who bought the deal did save a lot but are now getting frequent calls and mail from Snapdeal. The Subject of the call or email is, “We appreciate your cooperation in refunding the amount of INR 6500/- credited to your bank account in error. We regret any inconvenience this may cause. The bank details to credit the amount are mentioned here. Please reply with the Order Number/Transaction code post the successful transfer of funds.”
We don’t think there is any kind hearted customers out there to give a positive response to their email or call. Many, who might have at least once got mistreated by Snapdeal, will consider this as the right time to bite back. We don’t intend to defame any company or person by this article, hope the good prosper, Peace!