My dear friends, fellow HUMAN beings, Yes. I am writing this because I’ve been asked to, by my own friends (oops, sorry. Just acquaintances!). Sachin and Binny Bansal, the humble founders of Flipkart, have written an apology letter the very next day of the Big Billion Sale. Yes. There were a lot of mistakes. A lot. This was acknowledged and apologized for, with not just justifications or excuses. And it takes courage to accept mistakes. It was a first of its kind sale for Flipkart and for India too, from an INDIAN company. It took more than guts and bravery to not just conceive, but even EXECUTE this idea. Like a fellow HUMAN being has written in the link I’ve shared, Amazon is a monstrous organization which has been in the game for a much longer time and has the money to embark upon such endeavours. My dear Indian friends, Flipkart is YOUR company, OUR company. Lets, for once, be proud of something our own. To start with the mistakes: - The prices went up by double and the pages showed 50% off to come back to the original price. - The cart got emptied as and when you added more products. - Orders got cancelled. - Products “SOLD OUT” in seconds - MANY MORE. YES TO AAAAALLLLL those mistakes you are thinking of RIGHT NOW. AT THIS MOMENT. :) Yes. As customers (Customer is the king!), we have ALL the right in the world to complain, yell, and vent out your frustrations. BUT, my dear friends, It was their FIRST time, this idea of a big sale of such magnitude. And the CEO and COO have apologized for ALL the mistakes and have taken full responsibility for it. Yes, I’m repeating this sentence deliberately. They said that this will not happen “again”. It takes guts to say that there is a NEXT TIME even after all our love-filled feedback and responses. :) Now, being a HUMAN being first, I personally want to say a few things. Flipkart had more traffic to their website than they had anticipated (now that’s a good thing, thanks to us, the exuberant buyers! :-) ). Yes, the servers deployed for the day could not take all our love-filled “load” and sometimes the website crashed and sometimes it was annoyingly slow. (Slow internet is more irritating than no internet. High-five on that!). And the pricing mistakes, orders getting cancelled, our carts (products missing from our wish-lists) getting emptied are mistakes that cannot be justified anyway. SHOULD not be, I give it to you… That has been duly noted by the company too… Now, I don’t know ANYTHING about sales like YOU all do… :) I am ignorant. But I lose nothing by taking a minute and think that it would have been teams of tens and hundreds gearing up to make the second most populated country in the world happy! (Woah!!!). Although it’s not an excuse and cannot be accepted under any circumstances, “HUMAN” errors occurred. To err is HUMAN, to “”””””””FORGIVE”””””” is divine! At least my parents and teachers have taught me this throughout my life. My friends correct me when I make fun of someone or criticize someone. They teach me not to be harsh on others. They don’t join in the party of criticizing others, instead, they teach me how we need to be kind and nice and put ourselves in others’ shoes. Why have we forgotten to be JUST NICE, let alone be KIND. Does this bore you as a philosophy that just belongs to the books? Why do we take pride in condemning everything? Yes, there are negatives, too many of them, all around us. But what about approaching them in a way that helps EVERYONE around us grow, and not dishearten them by harsh comments, sadistic jokes, creating ‘memes’? What about being just nice? What about being a patient mother who corrects her child when it goes wrong? Is money everything? Now, being a customer, I would not criticize them for their mistakes BLINDLY. They have also done great job so far. I have faced inconveniences, but I’ve tried to understand the plight of the delivery boys getting stuck in traffic jams, the shipping of products getting delayed and such things. It is annoying to not get what we want in time, but LIFE does that to us, not just Flipkart. Some wise man had once told that patience and kindness are virtues. Flipkart did advertise about the big day and got our attention as much as possible about it. But why are we forgetting those who ACTUALLY benefitted from it? We have seen entire families purchasing cell phones and other things and being happy about the discounts. We have known friends who bought the inexpensive pen drives and tabs and phones among other things. BUT, maybe Flipkart forgot that we are the second most populated country in the world when they were thinking of their stock in the warehouses. Mistake. Agreed. I have not appreciated Flipkart those hundreds of times when I got what I wanted in time. So, I have no moral right to criticize them when they fail ONCE. Also, even if we have to, we can COMPLAIN in a nice way. We are capable of it, we can TRY, eh? :) Why are we not proud of OUR own Indian company and criticizing them in front of the whole world as though they have ONLY failed. BELIEVE ME, A LOT OF PEOPLE DID buy stuff for lower prices than usual. Just because products got sold out, does not mean we have to be reminded of the Fox and the Sour Grapes story. We are better than that, we’re sophisticated Indians, aren’t we? ;-) :-) I think, my dear fellow HUMAN beings, that we are all capable of being happy for others. Instead of creating jokes and memes and using cuss-words, maybe we can criticize in a constructive way that helps us all grow and avoid mistakes next time. IT IS EASY TO CRITICIZE. IT IS NOT EASY TO ESTABLISH A COMPANY, HIRE THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES AND SUSTAIN IT. I cannot do this - for the love of my life - creating another Flipkart and hiring thousands of people, CREATING jobs and quality life, and INFLUENCE THE ECONOMY OF SUCH A BIG NATION!!! How I adore ALL the entrepreneurs out there. :-) How the men and women with such courage inspire! “Tell” Flipkart. “Write” to them as to where all they can work on and improve their services. Aren’t we capable of a tad bit patience and endurance? We have endured so much as a nation, should a ”sale” spread so much venom, hatred, sadistic jokes like virus on Facebook and twitter and what not? I applaud your humongous effort of typing an “o” in place of an “i”, which, cosmically(is that even a word? :-p ), lie next to each other on the keyboard, and calling it Flopkart! :) Such efforts! :) This is not just about Flipkart… But why are we so impatient? Why such malice? How is this collective psyche contributing to our growth mentally and emotionally? I’ve been told that I fight childishly, and am naïve and stupid and silly in my arguments. But if GROWING UP means not looking at the good things at all, picking on the negatives, and wasting time thinking about what world-class jokes I can create about a HUMAN attempt, I would rather not grow up at all, and would choose to be naïve. Always. Thank you for a great lesson, my dear fellow HUMAN beings. :) Poulami Roy Chowdhury, Anindita Roy, Prìyankā Victor, Varkey George, Shripathy Hadigal, Sharath, Anandi... :-) openlettersthatmatter.tumblr/post/99477250611/open-letter-to-flipkart-and-to-indias-assholes
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:27:22 +0000
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