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Want to buy a phone? Online discounts could become scarce as companies step up crackdown
The report claimed that following complaints from retailer associations, Xiaomi and Realme are repurchasing stocks selling at lower prices.
Smartphone brands like Xiaomi and Realme are aiming to stop retailers who are offering discounts on their mobile phones on online platforms, Economic Times reported. This comes as the companies aim to take over the offline channel to boost growth in India. The report claimed that following complaints from retailer associations, Xiaomi and Realme are repurchasing stocks selling at lower prices with the aim to trace back retailer and distributor and penalise them.
What actions are companies taking retailers?
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Brands are not taking any action as of now and letting retailers go with a warning after making them sign an undertaking that stops them from selling their products outside the authorised channels, ET reported citing multiple instances of such undertakings signed by retailers in Jammu, West Bengal, Haryana and Tamil Nadu.
What about the complaints on deep online mobile discounts?
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Several complaints from state units of the All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) were seen as per which over a dozen products from brands such as Xiaomi, Realme and Samsung were being sold at prices on online channels that are around ₹1,000-2,000 lower.
"This is a real alarming situation to hear that a brand has allowed the ecommerce platforms to register retailers online, majorly wholesalers, to sell their products just to gain share but actually losing the ground and faith of the mainline retailers who have been putting hard efforts to sell product to the consumers with best of their abilities," the retailer association said in a letter to Realme on March 26, adding as per the report, "A strenuous action backtracking the root cause of concern lies in the brand's own control and should be taken up for the best continued constructive outcomes for the brand in the long term."
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Similar letters have also been sent to Xiaomi while as a representative promised action telling the outelt that "these are the stocks being uploaded online by scalper retail partners after reducing all schemes. We are purchasing the stocks to find the source and fix it with heavy penalties."
