RANT: SEASON 6 - TITO'S RANT

Greatest Mobylizers!!.......Greatest of the greatest of the greatest Mobylizers!...I greet una...young and old....tall and short....big and small...I’m sure you are wondering why my greetings sound like I’m about to start a rally or campaign. Well yes...today’s issue needs a rallying of meaningful Nigerians to stop one terrible act that has been taking place in our country.

When I got this message, I almost didn’t want to post it because I did not want to sort off tarnish the image of the organization involved. But after a second, third and fourth thought, it occurred to me that my reason for not wanting to post it is one of the reasons that fuel this preposterous act. My dear people; what is bad is bad.....cheating is cheating...there is no grey area around it at all. The victim was clearly cheated and wants everyone to know so that we all would be careful in our dealings with similar organizations. I have joined his rally and I hope after you read this you would make some sense out of it and do something before you become the next victim. Read on...

Moby, the way we are being cheated and treated without respect in this country is saddening and unbecoming of a country that seeks to emancipate and acquire the status 'developed country'. Customer service in this country is almost zero (another rant for another day). And because there are no serious consequences for such ridiculous behaviors, complacency has totally eaten into almost every area of life especially in the government of the country. That’s why the police can kill innocent citizens and mask the act under “accidental discharge” or a bank manager can be away from his desk for half the day and say he was having his lunch...or a public worker would leave work without any permission to attend a 5-day revival at her church and deem her reason justifiable.

Anyway, why I am writing this is because I was cheated by JUMIA, the online retail shop and I really want them brought to book for it. Here is how it happened:

Sometime last month, around 14^th June, 2014, I went on the Jumia website in search of a camera I needed badly. On the site there were two Items of the same product, an L320 Nikon Digital camera. But they had different prices. One was N24995 and the other N25995, but they were the same and exact product. I wanted to know why one product would have two different prices so I clicked on the items to learn more about them. Now both Items were L320 Nikon digital cameras and they both came with free 4gb Memory card + card reader but on reading further, I saw that the one for N25995 comes with a Pouch and battery charger added to the other stuffs hence the slight different in price. So I picked that and opted to pay on delivery.

When I got the order confirmation mail, I saw the pouch and charger were omitted and I immediately called to alert them. The customer care agent assured me that the items would come with the delivery as long as it was written on the site and I even made more orders through this particular agent. Before my order was delivered, I made more calls as regards the initial error I noticed and all the agents I spoke to assured me I’ll get my order in full.

The day the camera finally came, behold it didn’t come with the pouch and battery charger. I called immediately and I was told the other items would arrive separately. Now what had happened before that day was that the extra items I ordered through the customer care agent were delivered in parts and not together, so it just thought the same thing would happen. Let me say at this point that this was my first time using Jumia.

I paid for the camera ( I have the invoice, and I’ll send it to you) and sent more mails to Jumia, asking for my pouch and charger. Then a reply came saying they were looking into it and that my request/complaints had been forwarded to the appropriate quarters. After about four days, I got a mail saying the camera does not come with a free pouch and battery charger. That was shocking because I knew what I saw, so i went back to their site, saved that page and sent to them in a mail. Another mail came saying it was a mistake that the camera did not come with those items. That would mean that I paid N1000 extra because remember I said there were 2 items of the same product with two different prices. So I asked for a refund of N1000 because that was the difference in the amount.

I got a reply about 2 days later saying a voucher of N1000 would be issued to me only when I spend N5000 and that it was valid for the next 30 days only. Imagine, I am being told to pay for their mistakes. I sent an angry reply saying I probably wouldn’t need anything from Jumia in the next 30 days so would that mean I lose my money? And that’s the question I’m still asking and waiting to get a reply for. Jumia is asking me to pay for their mistake before I can get my money back and if I can’t pay then my money don enter voice mail.

In my books (and any reasonable book) that is fraud. That is swindling, cheating and should be treated as a criminal offence. Why would they treat customers that way? I put up a post on my face book wall and I found out many other people have had similar experience.

 

 

 So just how much would they be making by ripping off customers and going scot-free? This has to stop. I was almost going to ignore it saying it’s just N1000 but NO! The money is not the issue, but the act. Imagine 1 million people letting N1000 go? That’s a lot of ill-gotten money and today it’s N1000, who knows how much they’ll try to steal next time.

I opened a twitter handle @onlineshopfraud where we call can fight them and other on-line shop thieves with the power of the social media. I have started the hash tag #jumiasteals so that they can know we are not fools and we don’t want to be taken for fools.

MOBY SPEAKS: My people, they have spoken.... Have you been a victim of online theft? What did you do? I would love to know so we can help this ranter. Thank you.