Hi Friends,
I have been a fan of online shopping for many years now. I used Amazon.co.uk when I used to live in London, United Kingdom. I have bought from Amazon Unites States as well and even got them delivered here using Aramex Global Shopper. In India, I have bought so much from Amazon.in and Flipkart as well. I have even found out so many other websites that now don't exist as well.
If talking locally, I have bought from Takealot, OnedayOnly, Lootcoza, EverydayShop and many more with mixed results. I have never bought from Shein and Superbalist.
Amazon South Africa is still in its first day and the website is being slowly built. The data is slowly being uploaded to the same and it may be seeing a lot of traffic from enthusiasts like me.
Why do we buy from Amazon?
- My reason is the price difference between the retail store price and the Amazon deal price.
- Secondly, is the faster delivery with tracking saving time to go to the store and buying it at full price with maybe 5-10% discount.
- A wide variety of options (catalogues) are available before you buy the right one for your needs.
- Full reviews are available from the people who have bought the same items before you.
- You can buy everything under a single roof so online shopping becomes an ease.
- The same account details you must have used for Kindle and Prime Video can be used to login into Amazon.co.za. My local address was already known on the website. Even my India address is visible in my account.
- Amazon is offering free first-time shipping for a certain time period to fetch new customers.
- The shipping charges are ZAR 70 which is more than Takealot and OneDayOnly. Takealot has decreased the same to ZAR 30 only which they were offering if you go and collect from one of their takealot collection points and OneDayOnly has ZAR 59.
- Any shopping above ZAR 500 can reduce the shipping charges to zero. That's really good as it's the same as Takealot.
- Currently, the catalogue of items is getting indexed as when I first searched in the morning, it was showing items could not be delivered to South Africa and now the same items are unavailable to buy if available can be delivered to your address.
- Currently, some of the pictures and prices of the items are random whereas the same item is also available at cheaper prices on the website.
- There are no local reviews available currently.
- There is no Amazon affiliate programme link currently visible.
- The search engine currently is not showing what you want to see but rather what it has available instead of saying not available.
- Amazon Kindle and other items are not there as yet.
- Amazon Basics items or catalogues are not there as yet.
- Amazon Prime Video has not been integrated with Amazon.co.za as yet.
- There is no Amazon Prime Membership facility available as yet.
- There is no Amazon Audible integration as yet. I now know how they know my address as I was an audible member for the last 3 months (free service) and earlier too (trial service) so they got it from them.
With Amazon now launched in South Africa, the catalogue of items is going to increase and I hope that the prices of the items will definitely decrease. Currently, some of the items are much pricier than at the other random Online speciality stores, especially for the fountain pens and inks that I checked. Currently, a lot of books are available so it's a full circle Amazon started by selling books so in South Africa they are doing the same. I also don't see a lot of Jinhao and other brands from China not available in the store. As and when a lot of business gets enrolled and upload their stuff to sell on Amazon, the catalogue of items will increase at an exponential rate.
I will definitely be looking out for the catalogue and will definitely order the products in future. Currently, I don't want to spend on items I already have and that I can buy somewhere else at cheaper prices. Welcome Amazon to South Africa, I have waited for you for more than 11 years. I can't wait for you to beat the prices from all online stores in South Africa and I want to say that I will buy it from Amazon.
Aum Namah Shivay!
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