After Dr APJ Abdul Kalam’s death, people across the nation were frantically searching for a tangible piece of Kalam history – his book: Wings of Fire – An Autobiography.
What they came across on a popular e-commerce platform shocked them.
The price of the book had suddenly increased – which many looked upon as Flipkart’s way of milking money out of a national tragedy.
What ensued was inevitable. An angry twitterati started trolling the news feeds.
The question is, what really happened here?
Was the popular e-commerce company actually guilty of trying to set cash registers ringing, risking coming across as a money-hungry conglomerate?
One couldn’t help but wonder if the netizens’ rage was justified.
Flipkart’s Explanation
Flipkart, however, did its best to douse the flames. This is what a Flipkart representative had to say:
On Flipkart, at any point of time, there are multiple editions and reprints of the same book sold by different sellers. Customers have the choice to sort any product by its price, relevance or popularity and make a purchase decision based on seller ratings or delivery time or cost.
With respect to APJ Abdul Kalam’s Wings of Fire – An Autobiography, as on date there are 28 listed sellers offering three reprints of the first edition, having varying MRPs. The April 2014 reprint of the book is priced at Rs. 275, the June 2015 print is priced at Rs. 295 and July 2015 reprint of the book is for Rs. 325.
If a seller goes out of stock, the algorithm recalculates and discovers the new set of sellers for that product. In the case of Wings of Fire – An Autobiography, one of our sellers went out of stock and the system recommended an alternate seller with a different price.
So What’s the Big Deal?
One is inclined to believe Flipkart’s explanation – the probability of a seller running out of stock is pretty high and certainly not unprecedented. But what’s really interesting here is that Flipkart’s competitor Amazon has priced the book at Rs 210 – still less than what Flipkart is offering on their site.
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