Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale is glitchy the second year running

Customers ran into errors on Flipkart’s website and its app. It was not pretty.

Last year, Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal had to apologise to customers cancelling orders, pushing up prices, and glitches in the Flipkart website during the company's annual, much-hyped #BigBillionDay sale. This year, Flipkart seems to be struggling again. 

Flipkart's 2015 #BigBillionDays sale kicked off on Tuesday, and is app-only, meaning that even though people can browse the website, they will need to download the Flipkart app on their phones to actually avail any discounts. 

This seems straightforward, but here's what a lot of people got when they tried to launch the app:

@Flipkart @Flipkartsupport if your app always shows this error, why force customers to shop app only? pic.twitter.com/Iu8hPqAI5n

— Sherooo (@Hitesh1123) October 13, 2015

Big Billion Day on @Flipkart has started. pic.twitter.com/AwA1rdZk15

— Rahul Srinivas (@whizkidd) October 12, 2015

How do you'll expect us to shop when the app doesn't open a single thing @Flipkart?

— Asad Khan (@Asad96Khan) October 12, 2015

Big billion days are back on #Flipkart! Anything you click gets out of stock! Flipkart should stop this flop show

— Ricky (@vohrarohit) October 12, 2015

Meanwhile, Amazon and Snapdeal, Flipkart's main competitors who also had their own sales, seemed to handle the heavy traffic just fine. Snapdeal even issued a statement saying that it saw record traffic for its Electronics Monday sale and was on track to reach $100 million in transactions. 

Naturally, Snapdeal co-founder Rohit Bansal couldn't help gloating.

Looks like India has chosen @snapdeal as the app of their choice this festive season! pic.twitter.com/wb21EvZnpF

— Rohit Bansal (@rohitkbansal) October 13, 2015

Flipkart is expected to make ₹ 3,000 crore from its 5-day sale. This comes at a time when the Bangalore based e-commerce major has seen its gross merchandise value climb up to ₹ 2,600 crore for September.