China-based Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro smartphones in India last month on Valentine’s Day. And, both these smartphones went on their first sale in the country on February 22. Xiaomi later that day announced that it managed to sell over 3 Lakh units of the Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro in the first sale. However, even with such an impressive first day sale, there were a lot of customers who were miffed due to not being able to buy these smartphones.
As is with majority of the sales of Xiaomi products, the Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro went out of stocks almost instantly after the sale kicked off, as a result of which many couldn’t buy these smartphones. Well, it has been found that there are many people who are buying these smartphones and illegally reselling them at higher prices.
#RedmiNote5 & #RedmiNote5Pro: we sold 3L+ units in <3 mins. This means 1L+ phones/min! 😎
After the amazing success of Redmi Note 4, we had put in a lot of effort to increase supply of Redmi Note 5. This was the biggest ever sale in India!
Gear up for the next sale on 28th Feb! pic.twitter.com/qbOWYxClFZ
— Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) February 22, 2018
Now we all know how popular Xiaomi’s sub-₹15,000 smartphones are in the country. And, some people are wrongly taking the advantage of this popularity to pile up some cash by stocking up the smartphones during sales and selling them later at a much higher price. As Xiaomi smartphones can be hard to purchase at times, interested parties are ending up paying higher amount to those who are reselling these phones.
Hence, to restrict reselling, Xiaomi India has removed the Cash On Delivery (COD) payment option for the upcoming sales of Redmi Note 5 Pro on Mi.com as well as on Flipkart. Xiaomi says this should give customers a better chance to purchase their products.
Here’s what Xiaomi said in a post on Mi Community:
“We understand that many of you have not been able to buy Redmi Note 5, Redmi Note 5 Pro and Mi TV 4, despite us bringing very large quantities (more than 3 Lakh units in the 1st sale itself). 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.”
Apparently, Xiaomi also blocks suspicious Mi accounts of people who reject orders upon delivery and order too many phones in a certain period of time. You can click here to know more about how Xiaomi deals with suspicious Mi accounts.
Having said that, if you are someone who hasn’t been able to buy the Redmi Note 5 or the Redmi Note 5 Pro yet, the next sale starts at 12 pm tomorrow on Mi.com as well as Flipkart. Be sure to log in to your account in advance to increase your chances of placing the order.
