Sad tales as consumers recount Black Friday experience  

Black Friday, a day when retailers offer massive discounts to shoppers has come and gone but consumers have been expressing dissatisfaction over the whole experience which they say fell far below their expectations.

For some consumers, black Friday has become the period when retailers dispose goods that have close expiry dates or those old products that nobody wants to have while for others, it is simply an avenue for retailers to defraud shoppers.

Joseph Eze, a Lagos-based entrepreneur, says he lacks the right words to express exactly how he feels. Eze had taken advantage of the black Friday which comes once in a year to order a birthday gift for his wife only for the online store to ruin the surprise.

Initially, Eze was elated that he was getting 18 percent discount for an original Infinix Zero 3 phone which was sold between N57, 000 and N60, 000 in the open market.

He placed an order for the phone but upon delivery, Eze was shocked to find a fake version of the phone inside an original pack.

Eze recounts, ‘‘a certain young man named Lanre called me that my order was ready for delivery. At about 11am the same day, he arrived at my residence with a pack of a supposed Infinix Zero 3 phone which was meant to be a surprise birthday gift for my wife.

‘‘I opened the package and I saw an Infinix Zero 3 phone inside it. I transferred N43, 800 to his account, N800 been for shipping. I was angry, embarrassed and disappointed when I turned on the supposed Infinix Zero 3 phone only to discover that it was 100% fake.’’

Eze called Lanre several times but the seller kept ignoring his calls so Eze contacted the online retail store who apologised promising that the seller would get in touch with Eze within eight days.

After calling Lanre more than 20 times and sending text messages without any reply, Eze wrote the online store again requesting for the seller’s address but his request was not granted.

He got the address of the seller from someone who works with the online retail store and tried to track Lanre down only to discover that the address does not exist.

Eze found out that Lanre also displays his goods on other online stores and he told his wife to place an order which she did with a different delivery address.

‘‘Immediately Lanre entered the gate, I told the gateman to lock the gate. I reappeared and asked him how the hide and seek game has been all these while. He started pleading an,’’

Eze made sure Lanre transferred the money back, signed an undertaking and paid N2, 000 since he was the one delivering the phone back to Lanre.

‘‘I, Asheer Lanre of N0 17 Aiyedu street power line, berger area of Lagos use this medium to undertake that I have returned the N44,000 I collected for the Chinese version of Infinix zero 3 I sold to Joseph Eze of (address withheld) and retrieved the phone back from him this day xx November 2016,’’Lanre wrote.

With his money back in his account, Eze is pained that the online retail store never deemed it fit to contact him despite his mails.

‘‘I don’t know this Lanre man, I only placed an order on that website because of the X online retail store and the company has not even tried to get in touch with me since then,’’ Eze said.

When BusinessDay contacted the online retail store, they promised to take the necessary action to prevent a similar occurrence.

Jennifer Oforka, a Lagos-based teacher had made huge plans for the Black Friday but she ended up buying items that were almost expired.

‘‘I have been waiting for black Friday to make most of my Christmas shopping so I joined the rush for those items that were heavily discounted not knowing that some of them had few days left to expire. I only discovered the following day and I bought quite a lot of them.

‘‘This is simply wickedness is higher places. I was trying to save the money I did not even have but I ended up wasting money. The wait for black Friday was a waste of time,’’ said Oforka, told BusinessDay.

Edith Adebayo, a banker in Port Harcourt, said she observed that retailers deliberately skyrocket prices of their products weeks before black Friday so as to reflect that indeed they have slashed prices but in essence they are only selling at their real price.

‘‘I knew those black Friday offers were too good to be true. I planned on getting a laptop but I was shocked to get a higher price and they were even claiming that they had discounted almost 20percent.

‘‘There is no way we can have a true black Friday because the economy is in a bad shape right now. Which retailer will offer such discounts with this present dollar rate when most of them are barely trying to survive?’’ Adebayo queried.

CHINWE AGBEZE