Thursday 9 October 2014

Guy's Python Code Seems To Show Flipkart's Big Billion Day A Con

Talk of the town, Flipkart's Big Billion Day hosted on 6th Oct '14, which was expected to be a huge success, has instead brought Flipkart into quite some trouble.

The e-commerce company is now under scrutiny as people claim to have been cheated.

Recently, a fellow programmer Nikhil Venkat Sonti, posted on Quora about his experience regarding the same.

Apparently, he had written a Python script which you can find on github that parsed Flipkart’s page every 5 seconds to check whether any new product had arrived in Steal Deal section.

Using the 'say' command, he had programmed his script to say Ring Ring Ring to notify him about it. Also, the code mailed him about the products along-with some details. Surprisingly, the most tempting deals, the ones with unbelievable discounts were already in the Sold Out state.
This means that either the product got sold out within the span of five seconds or that it was posted so in the first place.

Here are a couple of sample mails that Nikhil added in his answer.
Mail-1:

from: X@somemail.com 
date: Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 6:11 PM 
subject: Simmtronics Xpad X802 Tablet 
Simmtronics Xpad X802 Tablet 
Offer: Sold OutFlat at Rs 99 

Mail-2:

from: X@somemail.com 
to: Y@somemail.com 
date: Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 6:11 PM 
subject: HGST Touro Mobile 2.5 inch 1 TB External Hard Disk 
HGST Touro Mobile 2.5 inch 1 TB External Hard Disk 
Offer: Sold OutFlat 90% Off 
http://www.flipkart.com/hgst-tou....
However, many have sided with Flipkart, citing that they did avail a few great deals like 16 GB pendrive at just Re.1 and a Rs.13000 camera at Rs.1300.

No comments:

Post a Comment