E-Commerce in Pakistan is pretty much scary. The real reason is trust deficit. This habit is maybe inherited in ourselves, we don’t trust anybody, but when it comes to online shopping, we don’t trust online stores at all.
When we think of buying something from website (local), we first think of “Are they reliable? Will they provide the original product?” to say the least. We are so scared of buying from them that we end up not buying anything from their front door i.e. Website.
Actually we have the habit of seeing and feeling the things personally before buying them. Unless and until we touch those sacred products, the itch will remain there forever.
But what happens to us when we buy something from International Stores like EBay or Amazon. Where are our habits then? Don’t they cheat? Don’t they have frauds? Long and short, we trust westerners but we don’t trust ourselves.
HomeShopping.pk website came to me accidentally. I was browsing around to get the prices of mobile phones so that I should go to market to buy one.
I got Pakistani Blood people : – ) so, browsing around lead me to this website where I found good prices. I immediately made up my mind to buy Blackberry storm from them as they were offering lower prices than market too.
Filled the form and added the mobile to my cart. Called on them and they said that we will send it over in 1 (ONE) day time from Karachi. I already had my goosebumps by that time. Speaking of the blackberry, what I found best from the market was that they were also offering warranty. Now, if you go to market to buy blackberry, you won’t get the warranty. That’s one hell of thing when you buy imported phone with warranty. Cheers.
The very next day, I got my 9530 Blackberry. Pin Packed with all accessories. Asked on Telenor guy for Blackberry services and they said that we have some complications with 9530. You must try 9500 instead.
Now that was a blow on my face as I already planned for Blackberry services. Eeewww!! I thought of contacting the guy from HomeShopping.pk in the first instant.
Called on him and he responded in amazing manner. Sir, we will send over the 9500 without any charges. Wow!! That was height of my excitement.
But my pants went wet when Telenor EDGE didn’t showed up on my Blackberry 9500 Screen too : – (
Collected my soul-less guts and called on the guy from HomeShopping again… I am Pakistani!!! Now, what I heard from that guy was simply amazing too. “Sir, if you would have read the reviews in the first place, you wouldn’t have opted for STORM. But we won’t disappoint you. You go for Curve (JAVELIN) and I will make sure that you get it on good price.”
Now, there was a difference of some thousands in the range. But he offered me a very good price and I told him to send over the JAVELIN. Now, I am Happy Go Lucky with Blackberry services on my new Blackberry Curve.
I could have gone in the other direction of writing the post by just writing about website and its good and blah blah blah. But then I thought of sharing my little experience with them so that people should get to know their plus point. I was surprised by their humble behavior, their tracking of goods, their response and the prices.
In the end, nothing is perfect and so are they. They have to work around on their website design to make it more users’ friendly, more artistic, more categorized.
Thumbs up for Pakistani E-Commerce Scene