Black Friday 2014: I couldn't buy anything from Jumia Nigeria

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday November 29, 2014 at 8:11:46:

This is the worst experience I've had ever had trying to buy things online from a shopping website but I'm not saying that they've been bad the whole year round since it just happened on Black Friday and I guess it's because of the large number of people also trying to buy from them.

Jumia Nigeria's website is one of the best shopping websites in Nigeria and black Friday is the best time online shoppers like me prefer buying things from them and this is because of the fact that it's a day that comes with the lowest prices. You'd get to see a whole lot of items being sold on Jumia at ridiculously low discounts and I'm talking as low as 70%.

The items I wanted to buy on Jumia were just waiting there and the time was counting down but I just could not buy it not because I didn't want to but because the website was not responding. At times when I click on the buy now button, nothing happens and even after adding items to my cart and tried checking out, I still was not able to make payment. At another time I successfully made payment and my bank account was even debited but afterwards my order was cancelled for no clear excuse. I know that money has left my bank account in favour or Jumia Nigeria but somehow, Jumia's website just cancelled my order and before I knew it, Black Friday was over.

At times the website was just to slow and non responsive and then later on it just went offline and I kept getting a message like Error 503 or an apology from Jumia stating that their website is experiencing huge traffic. The bottom line was that many online shoppers like me saw deals with our eyes but just couldn't buy because Jumia's website was not able to provide efficient service to all customers at once. I guess even websites are not perfect.

I recall that in 2013, Konga's website also experienced something like that but it seems they have learnt from it and I noticed that their site didn't really go offline for me while trying to shop there. I however do regret trying to buy things on Jumia during black Friday because it all amounted to a waste of my time, energy without even being able to get what I want. Some of the items I wanted to buy are now no longer available on the site since they've been sold out. I guess that's one of the things about shopping on e-commerce websites - Stocks are limited and based on first come first served basis.

I don't know if there were any customers who were actually able to buy things from Jumia during black Friday because I wasn't even though I was using an averagely fast internet service operating at 2 MB/S. I also learnt that Jumia had apologized for the bad service and that they've extended Black Friday sales but the problem is that some items have been sold out and I'm no longer encouraged to buy during black Friday. I guess shopping on Black Friday might not really be the best time to shop comfortably since one would be more likely to experience bad service and also have to compete with other customers.

Shopping on rush days like Black Friday is a bit like shopping at Nigeria's shopping malls during the weekend. You'd have to wait in line for a long time to get served and at times even the POS machine might end up losing network and you'd have to withdraw cash and come back to pay the cashier.

Jumia needs to plan ahead of events like this as it might end up making customers lose trust or feel that it was intentional and that they never really offered any discounts at all. It might make people feel that the whole hullabaloo about Black Friday deals were just a publicity stunt and that they never really offered low prices except on adverts.

Although I feel like I've been 419ed, I'm not going to lose trust in Jumia Nigeria for now. I'm still going to keep buying things from them since their prices are still reasonably low even after Black Friday shopping. It's better for buy certain things from Jumia than to be bargaining for price reduction at open markets in Lagos Nigeria.