A little over a week ago, I was having a casual conversation with my boss when he started discussing online shops in Nigeria. Konga came up and he started complaining bitterly about how he hasn’t heard a word from them 10 days after paying online with his MasterCard for his order.
I made an excuse for Konga blaming it on some third party sellers who seem to be giving the brand a bad name. Blogger Muyiwa Matuluko raised this issue in his post Why You Might Want To Avoid 3rd Party Sellers On Konga but the TechCabal editorial team has taking it down! God knows why. *side eye*
I asked my boss to check out the order details again to see if the goods he bought were being sold directly by Konga or a third party seller. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet, though before we closed for work that day, I recommended that if I were in his shoes, I would cancel the order one time.
Coincidentally around that same time, my little bro who runs a shop on the platform started complaining bitterly about delays in tracking, payments and what have you. At one point he was even worried about his business partners who might think he had suddenly gone rogue with their goods/pay.
Looks like the issues have escalated immensely and he has temporarily shut down his shop. Below is an email he sent out to his mailing list this morning
SebuFTech Ventures’ Services Paused Due to Konga Mall’s Recent Poor Service Delivery
Hi,
It has pitifully become a trend with Konga Mall to have a HUGE backlog of undelivered orders and delivered orders that are yet to be confirmed as delivered by the Courier partners such as (Konga Express, DHL, Courier Plus and UPS).
There are even large amount of items sent for over a week, yet no tracking information, absolutely nothing and yet Konga does nothing about it even after several calls.
We have even noticed wrong commission charges on some of our items where for instance, a laptop sale is supposed to be charged at 3.50% commission but is wrongly charged at 5% commission and after complaints, nothing is done about it.
A large amount of funds is currently tied down because of the laxity of the shipping partners and Konga as well hence crippling cash flow and gradually destroying our business.
Unlike Konga Mall of a few months back, recently calls and email complaints has now become totally ineffective as so little is done to remedy the situation.
Due to this recent terrible experience and in a bid to avoid the continued growing amount of backlogs, we have decided to halt sales and shipping of all our products on Konga Mall and continue our Offline business in peace pending when this issue is been resolved.
It has become an undisputed fact that Konga Mall has changed for the worse since the start of the New Seller HQ and thus it needs to review its relationship with its courier partners so as to ensure fast delivery and prompt delivery tracking updates. Also they need to start paying sellers on time so as to ensure cash flow needed to fulfill orders and maintain availability of stock.
Sorry for any inconvenience caused by all this.
Regards,
SebuFTech Ventures Team
=======================================
With this development, I’ve shelved all plans of buying my Nokia Lumia 730 anywhere online. I can’t shout! I’ll just wait till when next I’m in Lagos or if I’m able to find someone reliable coming to Sokoto from Lagos.
I’ve never warmed up to the whole online shopping in Nigeria thing since it all started and I’m definitely not going near it now! I just don’t have the patience for long stories especially when my hard earned money is involved.
For now I’ll just stick to buying online from peeps I know personally.
I wonder if Jumia has sat up. At some point they were having issues too.
UPDATE 1st November 2014 9.00AM : So one of their officers contacted us and indirectly confirmed that they’re having issues due to the recent rapid expansion of the platform but they hope to get things in order soonest.
Also some folks have contacted me via twitter DM saying their experience with Konga has been amazing. They only encountered issues with third party sellers.
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