The technological giant Xiaomi has finally decided to expand also in the West, and little by little it is “colonizing” Europe. Here in Italy we were able to welcome it already at the end of May, so much so that by December two new Mi Stores will open bringing the number to four throughout the country, although concentrated in the North. But the Chinese OEM has also made its official entry into the United Kingdom market a few days ago and for this occasion it has launched a promotion that is nothing short of tempting.
Xiaomi UK: it is immediately controversial
It was precisely this promotion that created headaches at Xiaomi in the UK, in fact, to celebrate its debut, the company launched the recent Mi 8 Lite and Mi A2, offered to the public at 249 £ and 256 £ respectively. But the troubles began with the initiative published on the official site that was giving away the aforementioned smartphones at a price of 1 £ equal to about 1,15 euro. Xiaomi is not new to flash salt, but in general they are initiatives that only proposed in China, and considering the really ridiculous prices to which the articles are proposed is normal that the units are limited to a few copies.
The real problem arose from the moment that the proposed units were only 10 and that the same ones were released gradually during the flash salt, so not in the immediate departure of the same.
@XiaomiUK_ Your promotion for the £ 1 phone was a scam. Looking at the logic and browser requests, there are no calls to check stock limits, you simply swap the text to show 'out of stock' once the timer expired. pic.twitter.com/4HxKFENufL
- Phil Williams (@phil_williams81) November 9, 2018
Of course, British users did not take the matter well by raising a controversy on various social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, where user Phil Williams gave Xiaomi a final blow. In fact, Phil Williams, sifting through the Xiaomi website, found that the page was programmed to show the writing Out of Stock as soon as the user pressed the Sort button. The matter is not clear but has certainly grasped the attention of the UK Advertising Standards Authority, because in fact this marketing operation is considered as misleading advertising.
Xiaomi naturally replied immediately, always apologizing on social Twitter, specifying that the units up for grabs were only 10 and that the misunderstanding was born from the use of flash salt terminology, comparable to a traditional sale, while the intent of 'company was to create a kind of lottery.
