Friday, December 11, 2015

Jumia and Co: CAVEAT EMPTOR

Executive summary, after all the world likes twitter:


  1. If you are shopping on Jumia on 12-12 or one of those funky sales splash things, make sure you choose pay-on-delivery.
  2. If you are going to buy from Jumia (I fear the other retailers may not be too different), BUYERS BEWARE and consider item 3.
  3. Check your order emails, if it says somewhere something like, "Please note that we will not accept returns for orders placed...". They mean unconditionally. It's the same as NO TESTING.
  4. Now you know. We still love shopping, but we can be wiser about it.

The holiday season is here and Jumia will be doing something (great?). Holiday goodies that makes your eyes pop. This is the current one but you can expect more before the year runs out.


STOP...


This beautiful image, from Jacobs Injury Law says it all. Shortly I'll be making references to some of what they had to say on buyer's safety online and boy they do have a lot to say.

As for the discerning, you guessed right, there is a story behind this and until I filed a complaint, I did not realize it had something to do with special sales, BLACK FRIDAY in this case.

The story, abridged

I purchased a Transcend memory card for my camera on Jumia, turned out I made the purchase on the 27th of November, yes, Black Friday. It arrived well after Black Friday but first week of December which is decent by our current standards but alas, it was no Transcend, it was a defective SanDisk, meant for a phone but with a jacket (an adapter) to make it fit in a camera. I had since tried to make a return and the unpleasant response I got initiated this warning to my friends and my friends' friends and my friends' friends' friends... you get the drift.

You bought it on Black Friday, we don't accept returns on Black Fridays...

The morale of the story is that seasonal shopping, like BLACK FRIDAY and 12:12 are special days that suppliers ship bad stock to customers, with the incentive that it cannot be returned, and we know that humans respond to incentives.

Hmm, who knows what other days there won't be returns. It turned out that somewhere in the order verification email that I got the clause was inserted that there won't be returns. If only my interesting eyes had seen that I was buying a "No testing" item from one of the companies that revolutionized online retail in Nigeria, that same "No testing" that you will expect to get from... let me not mention those markets, boys dey provoke now.

But remember, it was not even the product I purchased.

As clearly stated by Jacobs Injury Law... 

The concept of “buyer beware” is premised upon the idea that when two persons enter into an agreement, they both have enough information to evaluate the transaction.
The site goes on to say:
Immunizing businesses from civil justice does nothing to help the safety of the community.  In fact, it does the opposite.  It lets businesses commit harmful acts in secret, hurt the community, and tell them tough patooties.
But Buyers Beware is our most commoditized avenue to protect ourselves as consumers, so I'll rub it in, best as I can and hopefully this tiny voice in a corner of the internet reaches out and protects someone.

Have a CAVEAT EMPTOR holiday shopping.







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