Pallavi R was in a for a shock today morning when she randomly got a push notification from fashion app Myntra about a pair of Benetton shoes costing Rs. 5000 that had supposedly been shipped by the company. The message would’ve been a welcome piece of news except one little detail. She never ordered those shoes. Nobody had touched her phone to have made a purchase as her.
Within minutes, hundreds of other Myntra users complained of the same. Myntra has around 10 million downloads and a glitch of this level could prove to be a huge public disaster. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook groups were abuzz with people sharing screenshots of the incessant notifications they got from the Myntra app.
Myntra soon pushed out a tweet stating that there was a ‘technical glitch’ that had caused the unintentional spamming.
We're facing some tech issues with our apps, leading to unexpected notifications. Please bear with us while we fix this.
— Myntra (@myntra) May 19, 2016
Not just notifications about delivery status of orders that never were placed, some users also mentioned getting notifications about credit points from Myntra. “I got 40lacs credits from Myntra; don’t know how should i use it or not??? It’s working flawless”, said a user.
While some users saw the humour in the situation and made jokes.
“Happens with newly married guys! They got no clue what all is getting purchased around them! 😛“, said Amresh Chaudhary on Facebook.
Some users got annoyed enough to uninstall the app.
It’s unclear whether the app was wantonly hacked or it was a tech issue that caused the disaster. We have contacted the company and will update as we hear back.
Some people are even speculating if it was a calculated, insidious marketing move by Myntra. In the unlikely event of it being the latter, it might have got Myntra the eyeballs, but for the users it was plain nuisance as hundreds of them claimed to have uninstalled the app after the spam attack. Myntra app reviews on Google Playstore have taken a hit too as disgruntled users have already left scathing comments about the mishap. Just yesterday, Flipkart, owner of Myntra, was in news for allegedly stealing Amazon’s thunder by piggybacking on its (Amazon’s) MotoG launch by deciding to slash prices for similar Motorola models on Flipkart, thus earning the hashtag #SoreloserFlipkart from Amazon supporters.
Myntra went app-only last year, but after a hit in sales and strong public backlash decided to roll it back. It recently announced that the web version will be relaunched on June 1st.