In recent years, incidents of false advertising by rogue online shopping malls like Jumia have become so prevalent that reports of such con games are no longer surprising.
On this blog alone, we have published countless stories highlighting numerous transgressions brought against the company by disappointed clients.
You can check out some of them below. Jumia Con Games: Kenyans Accuse The Online Store Of Advertising Inexistent Black Friday Deals Jumia Delivers Face Towel Instead Of Blanket That Customer Had Ordered During Their Black Friday Offers She Ordered Full Hair, Received A Strand From Jumia Conmanship At Jumia Online Store BUSINESS: JUMIA Online Store Admits To Fraud Just three months ago, we covered the misfortune of a client who ended up losing over Sh50k when shopping for a mobile phone device on the widely advertised platform, only to end up receiving a completely different package from what he had ordered.
In the wake of this broad daylight robbery, the victim immediately contacted their customer care service and informed them of the erroneous dispatch.
To his astonishment, agents from Jumia informed him that the retailer holds a strong “no-return” policy immediately after the seal on the item’s box is broken.
This was to falsely intimate that the mistake was not on their end but the customer’s fault.
Similarly, a buyer who recently ordered a smartphone from Jumia is currently regretting the decision after they delivered the wrong product and refused to initiate a refund process.
Writing to us on Thursday, June 30, the victim said he had ordered a Redmi 10C which they priced at Sh16,499.
An M-Pesa message screenshot that he forwarded to us shows he paid the full amount on Tuesday, June 21, to an account linked to “Cossim Limited” - a last Mile Logistics Company contracted by Jumia.
But when he opened his parcel a week later, the customer was met with a completely different product; a Tecno Spark 8 and a set of Cussons baby wipes, which was not what he ordered. “Hi, Nyakundi, I ordered a product on Jumia and paid, but they delivered the wrong product and refused to refund me my money. Here are photos to show,” the source writes. With behavioural targeting rapidly growing as a marketing tool, it has become easy to attract consumers using available data to determine exactly which products they would like therefore sending false adverts with these products their way to reel them in.
Because people tend to use their subconscious minds most of the time, many businesses like Jumia have taken this opportunity to use deceptive and misleading techniques to their advantage to attract consumers to such products.
With the internet being loosely regulated in Kenya, many of those who fall victim to such scams by Jumia end up finding it very hard to access justice.
We always advise our readers to conduct proper due diligence when dealing with such shadowy firms.
A quick search on the internet will clearly show you that Jumia has been playing these con games ever since its entry into the Kenyan market in March 2013.