Last week, we had reported about the major issue facing potential genuine buyers at Flipkart and Xiaomi’s flash sales. The trend saw a lot of people purchasing smartphones in bulk with the Cash on Delivery (COD) option to re-sell them on other platforms for a small profit. As a result, a lot of genuine buyers were angered by the lack of units in the sale period. Well, Xiaomi India has decided to fight this practice by removing the COD option for the next few sales.
In its official blog post, Xiaomi India has confirmed to remove COD payment option for the upcoming sales of Redmi Note 5 Pro on mi.com and Flipkart. Here’s what the company said, “In order to restrict reselling, we have decided to remove COD payment option for the upcoming sales of Redmi Note 5 Pro on mi.com and Flipkart (Only for initial few sales). This would give a better chance to our Mi fans to purchase our products. We have always, and will continue to stringently discourage unauthorized reselling across all our channels.”
It is worth making a note that the company is removing COD payment option “only for initial few sales,” and it is not a permanent change. The company is expecting that this move will give a better chance of grabbing the smartphones to genuine buyers.
That being said, the restriction is only in place for the Redmi Note 5 & Note 5 Pro smartphone flash sales. It will not affect any other products including the recently launched Mi TV 4, or any upcoming TVs that the company launches.
Although the move is expected to curb fraudulent purchases, it remains to be seen if it affects Xiaomi’s sales. Talking about the sales, the flash sale for both Redmi Note 5 as well as the Redmi Note 5 Pro is tomorrow, March 7, at 12 PM on Flipkart and mi.com. If everything goes as per the plan, then you should have less trouble getting your hands on the devices.