Google Nexus 6 shipment delays in India stir anger among consumers, many consider alternatives

Google’s latest flagship handset Nexus 6 — whose both variants finally became available for purchase late last night as part of the mega Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) — won’t be sh

Google’s latest flagship handset Nexus 6 — whose both variants finally became available for purchase late last night as part of the mega Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) — won’t be shipping to your home anytime soon. As if the online exclusive deal wasn’t already an inconvenience to many, several users who recently tried to purchase the handset were told by the Google India’s Play Store to wait for as many as eight weeks before the handset would arrive to their home. The Nexus 6’s Indian availability was announced last month, when Flipkart started accepting preorders for the smartphone. Some of them who preordered the handset received it earlier this week, though a vast majority is still waiting for their turn.

@flipkartsupport When will Nexus 6 be available on @Flipkart ? It is already available on the play store.

— Manu Mehndiratta (@manumehndiratta) December 10, 2014

@Flipkart When will the Nexus 6 deliveries begin? I ordered on 18th Nov. Its been a good 3 weeks now.

— Jason Byrne (@jasondavidbyrne) December 10, 2014

Flipkart is offering a refund of Rs.3000 to Nexus 6 Pre-orders to make up for the delay,promises to deliver by Dec 20 pic.twitter.com/tjAc9eqyDA — Varun (@varunkrish) December 8, 2014

There is a further delay in the shipment of the 32GB variant, and those who preordered the variant were recently refunded Rs 3,000 cashback from the e-commerce site.

This is crazy! @Flipkart says the Nexus 6 I had ordered a while back will be shipped by August 15, 2015. pic.twitter.com/6h5z7zqxS3 — Deepak Jain (@DJain1989) November 29, 2014

The situation isn’t much better for those who are planning on buying the Nexus 6 at GOSF. As mentioned above, the Google Play Store says that buyers will have to wait till next year to get their handsets, while Flipkart still lists the smartphone as ‘Coming Soon’. The company, however, assures users that it is trying its best to ship the device as soon as it possibly can.

@MM360X We’re doing our best to deliver orders at the earliest. We’ll keep you posted. Please bear with us.

— flipkartsupport (@flipkartsupport) December 10, 2014

A report from last month claimed that the company was facing supply issues. Citing the same reason, the report had further said that Google could postpone the launch of Nexus 6 to India among several other nations for until next year. The delay in shipping could cost Google lots of customers. Several people have started looking for alternatives. The Economic Times recently interviewed Paytm’s CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who echoed the same frustration. “I’ve been waiting for it for some time now, but many Nexus 5 users waiting to upgrade to Nexus 6 have moved to Xiaomi’s Mi 3 which offers almost the same specifications at roughly half the cost,” Sharma said.

The OnePlus One, which launched in India earlier this month sports almost similar hardware at half its price. Unlike the previous generation of Nexus smartphones, the Nexus 6, however, isn’t dirt-cheap. The 16GB version of Nexus 5 was launched for Rs 30,000, while the entry-level variant for Nexus 6 costs Rs 44,000. For a recap, Google’s latest flagship smartphone Motorola-made Nexus 6 sports an impressive set of hardware. It flaunts a 5.96-inch QHD (2560×1440 pixels) AMOLED display. Inside the device sits a 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 quad-core processor that is paired with 3GB RAM.