I’m sure that you’ve seen Souq and Jumia ads everywhere, whether you are on Facebook or on any website i’m sure you came across their ads which contains some amazing offers with HUGE discounts. There is also a big probability that you already receive their daily newsletters with their special offers and deals.

I have to say that these guys are doing very well in terms of online marketing, their customer service is also good not great. However, they are a disaster when it comes to their core business, the products they are offering in terms of quality and pricing.

I’ve been strongly hit by Jumia in terms of pricing, yes, they are very expensive, much more expensive than average market price, on the other hand souq have pretty good prices but many of the products are not authentic, they are just cheap or moderate copies of the original products.

Here is my experience with Jumia, i bought a Roller travel laptop case, a huge one that fits in lots of stuff plus a 17″ notebook for 750 LE. When i opened it i found the REAL price tag, 660 LE… This this is probably the real market prices as everybody know that jumia is already over priced.

Jumia – Rolling travel laptop case real market price

I complained to their customer service, and just got back a reply offering me a 100 LE voucher when  i spend 300 LE on Jumia, they didn’t even bother themselves explaining the reason of what happened to me. Having escalated that issue to the management, they were very professional, they investigated that issues and got back to me saying:

Dear customer,

I want to personally apologize on the behalf of the whole Jumia team.

This gives you a very poor experience and I completely take the responsibility for it.

The price tag that you saw is different the the purchase price because it is the price for which we got the item from our supplier. This is not the retail price but a price negotiated with our supplier that is lower than the retail price. This is a special price from a supplier to a retailer (Jumia). On this price we have a margin which accounts for the difference of price.

However, I totally accept the responsibility for your bad customer experience. At Jumia we are working everyday to provide our customers with the best experience possible and in your case we obviously failed. I am deeply sorry for this.

As a compensation, please accept a 100EGP voucher with no minimum purchase: XXXXX

I hope you will give us another opportunity to serve you better.

Regards,

Head of Operations

I find their response very professional. In the second time not the first.

On the other hand my issue with Souq was not the price but rather the quality, Got a newsletter promoting Armani’s classic Acqua di Gio with a 25% discount so i decided to buy it choosing COD payment method, next day i got it, i was amazed about the fast service, i got my package with Aramex paid the amount in cash and this is what i found when i opened it

This is how the perfume i got from Souq looked like!! Terrible!

To begin with, this was the WRONG perfume, it was Aramni code 75 ML not Armani Acqua di Gio 100 ML. The package looked aweful, it looked old and had some wrinkles, and the plastic wrap was torn from the top, it seems somebody used it before. Actually when i saw this i understood this can’t be an original perfume so i wanted to make sure so i opened the box from the top and tried the perfume which was just like water and alcohol, a very cheap replica that you can buy for 20 LE not 500 LE.

So i made a complain, Souq sent somebody a few days later to pick it up, they will inspect the item and the return my money back in about 5 business days. The money should be available in my Souq account and then i can withdraw it or do a bank transfer to my bank account. They also said that the additional 15 LE for shipping and COD fees will be returned to me as well.

Long story short, the customer service of both Jumia and Souq were actually good. They responded to my queries within reasonable time and with reasonable answer.

The bottom line here, i’m never buying form Souq or Jumia again, i expect the problem to be repeated again, they have done nothing to prevent these kinds of issues from recurring, they only provided a remedy for me.