Will defective units, poor service put the brakes on India's Xiaomi Mi 3 excitement?

New Delhi: The flash sales that has earned Xiaomi fame and fortune in its home country China is also apparently working wonders for the four-year-old company in another of the world's largest mobile phone markets - India. But beneath the craze is a lingering rage - that of dissatisfied customers who are peeved at both the Chinese company and its Indian retail partner - Flipkart.

Enraged buyers are venting it out on social media, bombarding Xiaomi India's official Facebook page and other social media forums with their complaints and snarls.

Expressing their grievances online, many buyers say that the Xiaomi Mi 3 units are not only marred by hardware defects, but also have software bugs. Some users have found the SIM tray in their Mi 3 not working properly, while others are facing troubles with the micro USB port and there is another section of users who claim that their Mi 3 units are overheating.

A sizeable number of users have reported that the software on their phones was behaving weirdly. A complainant, found contacts from this phonebook and call log disappear the moment he pressed the call button. Another user found the camera app snapping erroneous images.

Going by the accounts posted on the Xiaomi India Facebook page as well as Mi 3 reviews posted on the Flipkart website, the customer support provided by Flipkart also appears to have been below par.

There are reports circulating that not a single buyer has been able to get a replacement for a defective unit, but such claims cannot be verified.

We have pointed out the issues to Xiaomi India and asked them how they intend to address the customer complaints, but are yet to receive any response from the company.

On Flipkart, the Xiaomi Mi 3 has an impressive average user rating of 4.4 out of 5, but about 10% of the 2460 people rating the product have given it a low 1 to 2 rating. Reading the disgruntled reviews gives an idea why. It should be noted that to keep a check on fake reviews, Flipkart has restricted the ability to post reviews for the Mi 3 only to registered buyers.

Update: In a telephonic conversation with IBNLive, Xiaomi's India head Manu Jain, accepted that while there have been instances of customer complaints he stressed that the company has been offering replacements to customers via Flipkart. Regarding the much-reported SIM tray issue, Jain said that it was mostly because of an error on the part of the user who did not follow instructions on how to eject and insert the tray. The company had also posted a video on Facebook instructing buyers on the correct way to insert a SIM into the Mi 3.

"We have been personally replying to people on our Facebook page and have offered replacement units via Flipkart to people with genuine issues," Jain said. Xiaomi says it is also open to discussion with customers facing any issue with their phones.

If you are a Xiaomi Mi 3 owner or a prospective customer and have any concerns or complaints, you can post them in the comments.

Some of the complaints posted on Xiaomi's India Facebook page are embedded below: ####

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