Flipkart's offers on Digiflip Pro XT712: What the fine print reads like

Flipkart yesterday launched its own tablet called Digiflip Pro XT712 priced at low Rs 9,999. Flipkart is going all out to promote this tab and says it comes a with 1 year warranty, along with 24-hour call centre support.   The company is also bundling some offers along with the tab such shopping benefits worth over Rs 5,300 and free eBooks worth over Rs 2,000. It’s also giving a Plantronics ML2 Bluetooth Headset worth Rs 1,199 free and if users purchase the bookcase for the tab which is priced Rs 799, they will get 50 percent off as well.   It should be noted that where the specs are concerned, it is offering the basics though with an excellent design quality and build. The 7-inch tablet boasts of a HD (1280x720) resolution with an IPS panel. There’s also a 1.3GHz quad-core chipset onboard, which is most likely a MediaTek MT6582 chipset and 1GB of RAM. As we noted in our first impressions , it doesn’t look cheap or plasticky which works to its advantage.   And while launching a cheaper tablet to fill in the gap with the market is all fine, one really needs to look at what else Flipkart’s Digiflip Pro XT712 p tablet offers. As far as the shopping offers are concerned, the terms and conditions don’t make them sound too appealing for now.   Where the shopping benefits are concerned, they come with a bunch of caveats. The free shopping offer is valid only if users buy from Flipkart app in the tab and the discounts are restricted to products listed by seller WS Retail.   The fine print reads, “To avail the offer, customers have to add the required products totaling to the amounts given below, to cart.” This is the Rs 5300 offer that Flipkart is bundling with the tab. The problem is that this is not a voucher that you are use as and when you like. It’s coming bundled with a set of conditions and applies to some products only.   These additional discounts will be over and above any existing discounts/offers and are valid till 31 Dec, 2014. More importantly the offer is redeemable only once per device from any Flipkart account. Which means that if you buy clothing worth Rs 2500 from the tax, the next time you buy clothes from the tab via the app, will get Rs 500 off, but only once.   The list is as follows: [caption id=“attachment_226524” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The list of terms and conditions.[/caption] From the looks of it, the offers aren’t very generous. Rs 500 off on a laptop doesn’t really sound like much. Where books are concerned, you’ll notice they are not on the list. So if you’re buying actual physical books from Flipkart via the tab, don’t expect an additional discount next time.   Where free eBooks go, you don’t get to choose your free eBooks. According to the Terms and Conditions, “The app will itself download all the free eBooks into your eBooks app library.” The list includes Speed Post by Shobha De, The Collected Novels by Khushwant Singh, Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories by Ruskin Bond, Wise & Otherwise by Sudha Murthy, Life Tree by APJ Abdul Kalam and some others. Oh Chetan Bhagat’s Revolution 2020 is also on the list.   Not only are these eBooks are only readable on the free Flipkart eBooks app, given the limited choice, you can’t help but wonder why not just offer a Rs 2,000 voucher to let users download what they want to read.   Where the discount on the Digiflip bookcase cover goes you have to buy it in the first 7 days after the launch (i.e June 26 to July 2), or the discount is not applicable.   Given that the terms aren’t too generous, you also can’t help wonder how the tab fits in with the larger Flipkart strategy. Filling the tablet space isn’t an easy task, and it is a market that is declining.   Even Amazon is facing trouble in this segment, but the American e-commerce giant has made sure its Android tablet provides an entry into the Amazon ecosystem. It uses a forked Android system with an Amazon app store. Which means app developers have to remake apps for Kindle. There’s  also the fact that Kindle is all about providing content on Amazon to users: from videos to music to ebooks, etc.   For Flipkart, the link between the tab and their larger retail strategy is not clear. Sure, it’s great that the tablet offers stock Android, but users don’t go for a tablet just because of the specs or even the OS. If they buy Digiflip Pro for Android only, then it’s just another Android tablet on the market. For the users, it doesn’t offer any special link with Flipkart.