Tech Talk columnist Geoff Augutis discusses the Wish online shopping craze and how dodging the bad deals will get you the most bang for your buck.
We have all heard of online platforms like eBay and Amazon, they are staples of the online shopping world.
While new websites and platforms are released daily, it is rare that one truly breaks through the noise.
Wish is one such example of this.
Wish is often referred to as the biggest store that you have never heard of.
Trading since 2011, it has really only earned its stripes in the past few years.
This is primarily due to their marketing strategy – Facebook.
If you have spent any time scrolling aimlessly through your Facebook feed, chances are you have seen Wish ads.
They present as a small variety of products for sale, often at crazy cheap prices.
So what should we know about Wish?
For one, the platform hosts a huge variety of products from all over the world – approx 200 million to be more precise.
This means we get everything from the ordinary to the strange to the weird and taboo.
The other unique feature of Wish is it is very much targeted at those who are shopping on their smartphone.
Much of the time it isn’t even for those who know they want something, this is the modern day equivalent of the chocolates on the impulse stand at the supermarkets.
As a user there are some things to be aware of.
Firstly, the global nature the platform means that goods can come from a long way away.
Combine this with low costs and you are likely going to be on an economy freight service.
All of this leads to slow shipments and over a month for delivery isn’t rare.
It is also worth noting that quality control isn’t a focus for this platform.
You may get something that is great, you may get something that is garbage.
Having said that it is often about how much you pay.
If the deal seems to good to be true, it probably is.
Armed with the knowledge and risks, you too could join the other 500 million shoppers on Wish.
- Related stories: Human microchip raises privacy issues
Interesting reading Geoff and wise warnings.
I always found Wish to be a bit of a gimmick with some of the products they sell and the the price they sell them for, often the real cheap stuff does not work or was not very well explained, you can however be lucky.
If I can find what I’m looking for at a reasonable price I prefer to buy locally. However, here in Belgium there are a lot of things that we cannot buy locally and over the years I have found aliexpress.com to be quite good.
1) Delivery can take between 3 day and X weeks, you just have to choose a local warehouse and the options you want, you can always get faster delivery if you pay extra.
2) You can always cancel delivery if it takes longer than they predict, it is an option
3) If something is not right, broken or breaks down, you can ask your money back and if you pay with direct debit, you get your money back within a couple of days, you have to prove what isn’t working with a video.
This from personal experience.
However, as I said above, try and buy locally!