iPhone 5: Souq.com answers 'fake deal’ charge

Souq.com, an online retailer in the UAE that offers electronics and other goods at a discount to in-store prices, has been under fire by customers that allege that some of the deals that it advertises are not genuine.

Case in point was the April 29, 2013, deal that offered the very popular iPhone 5 smartphone for just Dh999.

Emirates 24|7 covered the deal and reader responses to the deal here: 'Short-lived' Souq.com iPhone 5 for Dh999 deal frustrates buyers.

Among other grouses, many readers wrote in to let Emirates 24|7 know that while they were online during the opening of the deal, they couldn’t click to buy the trendy gadget as the Souq.com website seemed to have crashed.

We checked at that time, and found the Souq.com homepage unavailable at around 10am on the day, about an hour after the said deal went live.

The homepage was back around 10.30am, but by then the deal had already been “Sold Out”.

We asked Souq.com for a clarification on the huge number of reader comments that we received on the deal, most of them unhappy that they weren’t given a ‘fair’ chance at the deal, and some even doubting the authenticity of the deal.

Souq.com has, this morning, answered our query. This is what they have to say: “Thank you for your inquiry. Please be informed that there were only limited stock for today’s Wow Deal as the price of the iPhone 5 was more than 50% off. It was a first come, first serve basis and only a few of the fastest guys who were refreshing the page at the right time got the deal. And due to the massive traffic on the site during the promo period, we sometimes experience server problems.”

We’re not sure if this is enough to assuage customers that claim to have “almost” bagged the deal, with some claiming that they managed to click on the device and add it to their shopping cart, before being unceremoniously booted out of the system, or the device appearing as a ‘Buy Later’ item, at a much higher price.

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