After an overwhelming 6 crore bookings, Ringing Bells now faces protests: Report

The past week witnessed the most popular telecom story of our times in India. A little known company called Ringing Bells announced it was launching a new smartphone christened ‘Freedom 251.’ By naming it Freedom 251, it also revealed its price – Rs 251. Or about $4. Spec for spec, a device in the range of the Freedom 251 should ideally be priced at about 10 times the price. Somewhere in the range of Rs 2500 to Rs 3000. And being the value conscious market that India is, demand surpassed all expectations. We were soon receiving emails and queries from potential customers on how they could order the Freedom 251. After several rounds of controversy, including hints of the whole project being a scam, the owners of Ringing Bells finally announced that prebookings were being closed. In a notice posted on its website ‘freedom251.com’ the company said: Dear Respected Customer, We are humble and extremely grateful for your overwhelming response and trust. Respectfully this is to advice that the response far exceeds the number that we had expected and therefore we are now closing the invitation to bookings in this phase 1. We appreciate and acknowledge that we may not have been able to meet the needs of all but will definitely look forward to serving you again in the next phase. Many thanks once again and pranam. Jai Hind!! The overenthusiastic users didn’t seem to take this too well, and a few of the 6 crore users showed up at the Ringing Bells office in Noida to meet the management. According to a report in the Times of India, the guard at the office said (translated from Hindi), ’the bosses are inside, but no one’s allowed to go inside. I guess there’s some meeting going on right now. Besides, there are other office in this building. Everyone would be disturbed." According to the report, a few of the protesters felt it was unfair that the only means to place an order was online. And even that mode has been disabled. The report further adds that a few of the protesters tried defacing the company board unsuccessfully. However, a few onlookers commented that these were an attempt to gain attention since there were television crews at the venue. It’s unlikely any of them would have booked a phone.