Flipkart has a habit of launching new offers with an arsenal of smartphone stock they have on their eCommerce platform. Well, a lot of offers like the Flipkart Smart Upgrade program, Buyback Guarantee make sense but it recently announced Flipkart SmartPack: 100% ‘money-back’ offer seems to be a bit odd one.
As per this offer you can buy a smartphone up to Rs 17,000 on Flipkart technically “for free” but with some limits. The offer can be availed only when you purchase the smartphone via the app where you can actually see the offer and the different schemes for the specific smartphone.
Flipkart has three plans namely – Gold, Silver, and Bronze, giving you 100%, 80%, and 60% of your smartphone value after a period of 12 or 18 months. The offer does entitle you to a subscription to OTT apps, freebies, and other benefits depending on the SmartPack plan you select, a Gold pack will offer more benefits while the others a bit less likewise.
Some of the best premium services include SonyLIV Premium, Zee5 Premium, Voot Select, Zomato Pro, Gaana+, Practo Plus, and others. You also technically get freebies worth up to Rs 20,000 with some of the Flipkart SmartPack plans.
The offer chart shows that to avail the Gold plan you need to pay a minimum of Rs 879 per month (depending on the price of the smartphone), while for Silver plan you have to pay Rs 699 per month and Rs 399 per month for the Bronze plan.
This will range for either 12 or 18 months according to your choice, after the period as per the e-commerce giant, you must return the phone in a proper working condition in order to get the refund. You will not be able to cancel the Flipkart SmartPack plan once you have purchased it.
So, as the subscription works on a monthly basis, this means if you fail to pay for the service, not only you will lose access to the subscribed services but also the ‘money back’ offer on the device as well. This means if by any chance you fail to do so, this is a win-win situation for Flipkart as you will have to the price of the entire smartphone when you make the purchase.
Essentially as Flipkart markets it, you are paying for the subscriptions and premium services that it is providing with the Flipkart SmartPack: 100% ‘money-back’ offer.
Is it really worth it?
Now, let’s mathematically analyze this whether this offer actually makes any sense and whether you should fall into the meaningless lucrative trap laid by Flipkart.
Let’s take the Samsung Galaxy F41 for example, and take the 100% Money-Back offer i.e. the Gold Plan, you have to pay ₹1,359 for 18 months that accounts for a total of ₹24,462, and also you have to pay the entire price of the smartphone i.e. ₹14,999.
So you are spending a whopping ₹39,461 on a smartphone and getting back ₹14,999, which means you are only paying ₹24,462 to Flipkart. Now, this entitles you to 12 ‘Premium Services’, and here are all of them and their costs for a year:
- Complete Mobile Protection – ₹1,599
- Disney+ Hotstar – ₹399
- SonyLIV Premium – ₹999
- Voot Select – ₹499
- Zee5 Premium – ₹999
- Zomato Pro – ₹800
- Gaana Plus – ₹399
- Cure.fit Live – ₹ 2,499
- Practo Plus – ₹ 2,398
- Medlife Advantage – exact subscription charge not known
- Eros Now Premium – ₹399
- Voot Kids – ₹499
The total cost of all the premium services for 18 months accounts for ₹11,489 * 1.5 = ₹17,233 and the Medlife Advantage charges we do not know yet.
So, now it stands whether you should use Flipkart SmartPack: 100% ‘money-back’ offer or not just to avail these services because technically you are getting the value of your smartphone back. Now, it totally depends on your usage, if you feel you use all the services at once then its well and good, however, if you only one or two services everyday, this offer makes no sense at all.
If you cannot take advantage of the total ₹24,462, you are ultimately spending more on a “value degradable” product. Also, there’s a chance that you might be unable or forget to pay the subscription value monthly then you lose everything, so it’s a risk offer applicable to those who actually need all these services or just want to throw money anyways.
It doesn’t cost Flipkart much to give you all these services as they have partnerships, and if you do need these services to get those that you require. It makes no sense to pay so much and have the risk always, instead Flipkart’s Money Back Guarantee at ₹1 is a great offer that runs very often on popular smartphones. So, beware before you invest in these attractive yet deceiving offers.
