WantItAll’s customer reviews and the Amazon/SAPO saga
I was browsing muti's hot page earlier and clicked on a post entitled "Evolver - What's the story ?" which landed me at WantItAll.co.za - "South Africa's Online Shopping Solution".
[Side-note: visiting their site without "www", ie. their name, takes you to a blank page with a lame "We have moved Click Here To Visit Us" message. How difficult is it to update a domain record? Or automatically redirect? It's not...]
I'm not familiar with Evolver much (first impression: a try-hard band, and I'm so over Vernon Koekemoer. Nevermind their sell-out to corporate shows. Ok, so I'm feeling cynical...), but I have been frequenting a couple of local online shopping stores (and comparison sites) looking for a good deal on a new compact digicam (I'm 90% decided on the Panasonic Lumix TZ5) so I clicked through their site until I found the relevant product page. (Sorry for all the parentheses.)
I scrolled down to their Customer Reviews, to find 5 reviews posted in the last 4 days - impressive for a local e-commerce site. After reading one or two and seeing the customer names, I became a little suspicious. So I copied some text from one of the reviews and pasted it into a Google Search, to reveal the original source: Amazon.com.
Nowhere on WantItAll's website do they say that these reviews aren't by their own customers - in fact, they state the opposite - "What Our Other Customers Had To Say...". It wouldn't bother me that much if they had the decency to cite the source of the reviews, and not falsely claim them as their own.
Now I'm guessing that Amazon provide these reviews to their partners, or maybe sell them, I don't know. I don't think WantItAll is an Amazon reseller. On WantItAll's Help page (no About page - why?), they briefly explain their business model:
We facilitate the process of purchasing items off the internet on behalf of customers and then shipping the requested items to the customer.
www.wantitall.co.za consolidates orders within the USA in order to reduce shipping costs to South Africa, and a shipment is sent to South Africa on a weekly Basis.
You can read more about them at this MoneyWeb blog post - You want it all?, by Ronnie Apteker (director and co-founder of Internet Solutions). But be sure to check out the juicy comments too.
You can also watch this video which concerns WantItAll's view on the Amazon/SAPO saga that played out a while ago (hopefully their constant and restless rocking back and forth won't annoy you as much as it did me). I'm still not really sure what the outcome of that SAPO incident was, especially since WantItAll were the ones making all the noise about it in the first place. See Muti user ApOc's submission history - specifically post #4, "Amazon.com not shipping to SA?". This post no longer exists on the WantItAll blog.
I also find it very interesting that ApOc's first post to Muti, "Finally South Africans Can Really Shop Online!", is full of user comments that sound totally contrived. Very similar to the comments on the Evolver post.
And then there is The Times' Amazon halts SA Post Office deliveries which reads like a WantItAll PR campaign.
I had no prior opinion of WantItAll. I love what they're doing and I believe they have a solid concept. Maybe I'm wrong, but for now the above trail of discovery around their practice has left a bad taste in my mouth.
And after all of that, I can get the camera from Have2Have for almost a grand cheaper anyway!
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14 Comments
You know… As sceptical as things may sound you may want to consider the fact that they’re not using anyone for marketing purposes i.e. online marketing purposes, which is why their “social networking” strategy is a little shoddy and shocking … Bare in mind though, it’s very difficult to get a site popular on a social networking platform in South Africa and I think instead of slating people we should be giving advice on how to move forward.
You’ve done your home work though and I like what you’ve done.
One other thing, their actual site it http://www.wantitall.co.za/ from what I can could see on the Google listings they were having some issues with duplicate listings i.e. ranking for both sites iwantitall.co.za and wantitall.co.za, with this in mind I think they may have removed the redirect for Google SERP reasons.
Just a thought.
By the way, when I tried to submit this comment, your site turned out to be down, as were all my Hetzner sites for about half an hour this morning.. second time in 2 or 3 weeks…
@SEO Branding
A one line 301 redirect in their server config file would both address SEO requirements for a canonical url and remove the need for users to click that link.
@Luke: Hmm have noticed a bit of downtime too. Do you know if Hetzner provide downtime stats or anything like that? Will keep an eye on it.
@SEO Branding: If they want advice, here’s mine: don’t deceive your potential customers. There are honest ways to market yourself online – fake comments on social networks (I take this back if proven wrong) and creating FUD to bait new customers (and this) won’t go far in generating brand loyalty.
Re: their domains, wantitall.co.za is the only one in question. They could consolidate their listings with 301 (moved permanently) redirects on the unused domains, surely? From what I understand, that doesn’t hurt any existing rankings. As a blank page with no content to index, iwantitall.co.za can’t possibly be helping them.
LOL @ the comments on the moneyweb article, and the Amazon-cut-and-paste job for the reviews!
Excellent research coda!!
@coda
I think they have been having a few issues since they migrated their servers from Red Hat to Debian. Not sure about downtime stats, but you can subscribe to network notices in your control panel.. here’s the notice about the downtime on the 13th.
Battlefield 2 for R197?!!
I got it from Incredible at 80 bucks! Ha, what a rip off! Want-it-all sounds good in concept but they gonna have to do more to get me going..
Nice write-up. Yes, the selection is large, but the prices are crazy. I will understand if the unusual things (things you can’t get locally) are more expensive, but not the items you can generally get in SA. If I was me, I would implement a price structure that splits these two categories and only then their business model will make sense.
I have always prefered Take2.
@ khatshutshelo
Wow, if Incredible Corruption can beat you at price, you must be really bad.
Battlefield2 Deluxe Ed. for R91.00 at Take 2
Wow, I am amazed on how many shocking review stories up on this site about wantitall, I am pretty disapointed too and I seriously got it all, unfortunately I did this research only after I have been lead into the dark. wantitall has really good deals up on its site which makes people liz to go for, however after tranferring the money (in my case close to R5k) I have been informed that the item would not be available anymore (which I have been focusing on for one whole week) and that my money would be transfered back to me within 4 working days, imagine – my funds gone for that time being for a product which does not exist, hello – does the bell ring.
If 100s would transfer its money into thems account, the interest would add up nicely for them, apart from that I and for sure many others sit without that available funds to look further for profitable purchases, in the end we all try to find a good deal for ourselves, so if you ask me, wantitall – UP THE BUM!!!
I’ve used Wantitall successfully to order expensive camera equipment from the US. I wouldn’t order small things from them, the high cost of shipping / import duties etc only makes sense for big purchases or hard-to-find stuff.
Personally I like that they show the Amazon.com customer comments, I find local shops usually have too few comments/ratings to be useful and I always end up checking Amazon’s ratings anyway. Maybe it’s deceptive of them to pass off the comments as their own, but at the end of the day you are getting a better service.
While we’re on Wantitall bashing ;)…. I emailed them a couple of months ago about a glaring security hole in their site and they never responded (and the security hole still exists)
I have ordered a book on 17 Nov 2008. A wrong book was delivered and now WantitAll is giving me the run around in rectifying the situation. Up till today, 18 Dec, I am still to received the MS Project 2003 Bible that I ordered.
Will never recommend anyone to buy from these guys because of the poor service I have received.
Wow, I am amazed on how many shocking review stories up on this site about wantitall, I am pretty disapointed too and I seriously got it all, unfortunately I did this research only after I have been lead into the dark. wantitall has really good deals up on its site.
I have suspicion that these people work with SAPO and selling other people purchases online through wantitall. I’ve ordered some of the products listed on their site directly from the US, went to the main depo in cpt to pick it up as it was blocked by customs and the customs officer told me, I couldn’t have it. Now people who do not live in the major cities also purchase online but never collect cause you get like 3 weeks to pay the additional import taxes. Examples: Primaforce Piracetam; PEA, Bodybuilding Supps etc. So why are they charges people more than double and this crazy R217 delivery. SA is corrupt. Save your money and have people buy this stuff overseas for you.
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13 August 2008
Luke07:40 am
Like you say, the concept is solid – props to them for hacking the Amazon situation into a business model. The domain name thing is pretty amateur though and a pet hate of mine as well. I think every single time I’ve found a site that doesn’t serve pages without the www its been on IIS, as is this one. I’m not sure if that says more about IIS or the people that opt to use it. From what you say their marketing tactics sound pretty crap too.