Holiday shopping is really causing heavy traffic jams and office hours doesn’t allow us to shop when they are a few shoppers around. The solution? Shop on mobile! Since the dawn of internet shopping in the country, a lot of distributors and sellers wants to get their products online since internet shopping is less hassle than personally heading to the shops just to purchase one item.
Here are 7 shopping apps for your smartphones and tablets you can use to browse and look for that perfect gift or just something you want for yourself.
Lazada
Currently the leading eCommerce site in the country, Lazada has a great mobile app that practically provides everything they have in an organized and good-looking layout. Also, they offer deals and vouchers exclusively available for mobile app users only which gives more savings. It’s also multi-platform, although the Windows Phone version is buggy at the moment.
Android / iOS / Windows Phone
Takatack
Offering multiple products from big brands and even small enterprises, Takatack has a lot of products to suite your taste. It even has items from other popular shopping sites like Lazada and Zalora, and deal sites like Ensogo and CashCashPinoy. It’s pretty much everything available online plus opportunities for great product designers to have their items discovered by online shoppers.
Shopee
Shopee is an online shopping tiangge filled with cute clothing, hard to find bags, and more. It’s like having the World Bazaar Festival on your fingertips and for the whole year. Aside from that, it’s a great place to sell quality items without the hassle of setting up a booth and worrying about fees. You can also chat within the app to directly talk to the seller or buyer, and even look for trends using hashtags.
Zalora
For your clothing needs, Zalora has a lot of styles and brands for you. Unlike other shopping apps, it’s purely about clothing so you’re pretty much focused on your tailor shopping plus an exclusive collection too. They offer 30-day free return if you’re not satisfied with your purchase and they have a ZALORA digital Pop-up store at Edsa Shangri-La Mall as well for you to check out their items personally.
O Shopping
If you’re watching TV late at night, then you’ve probably encountered O Shopping. It’s the shopping channel of ABS-CBN in partnership with Korean TV home shopping company CJ O Shopping Corporation. With their app, there’s no need to stay up late or turn on the TV. Just click and browse through your phone or tablet and easily purchase without hassle.
EasyShop.ph
Like most other shopping apps, EasyShop.ph offers diverse product lines from popular brands to generic electronics. What’s nice about EasyShop.ph is they have local brands so you don’t need to rush to the mobile and look for their kiosk. It’s also a selling site for those who wish to have their products online.
YiLinker
While all of these apps are already established online stores in PH, there’s a new player in town that you could check out and be one of the first to try them. YiLinker, a Singapore-based eCommerce, still has limited items listed but it’s worth the try. It’s like an unfamiliar new boutique that just opened up and you’ll never know what they have unless you visit them by yourself. You can also sell items with them and be their one of their pioneer sellers.
Head to the app store and download now to free yourself from the heavy traffic. Just be sure to purchase smartly and keep your bank information in check when checking out.
I’ve had over a hundred items ordered from Lazada this year. Just the past two months alone, I’ve had three Lazada orders cancelled for no good reasons. They were cancelled 10 days, 32 days and 58 days after the orders were made (paid in advanced through credit card). If I knew sooner that they would be cancelled, I could have made other arrangements.
And don’t get me started on the countless delivery delays I’ve experienced with my Lazada orders (I live in Cebu). The clothes I ordered last December 10 has not yet arrived (19 days and counting). More than half of the time, they will fail to deliver within the estimated delivery. If you complain, they’ll just tell you that provincial orders take as much as 12 business days, which is inconsistent with the estimated delivery date on their website.
But my biggest gripe with Lazada is their webform/email “customer support”. It’s like talking to a robot with bad programming. The agents are either overworked or had insufficient training. Sometimes they reply only after a few days. Sometimes if you don’t follow up, they don’t reply at you at all. They keep telling me that they tried reaching me on my mobile but I don’t see any missed calls on my phone logs.
I’ve had numerous interactions with different Lazada agents for months but I did not fully realize their incompetence until I started shopping at Zalora last month and saw the huge difference. The Zalora agents CARE for the customers and go above and beyond to please them. Meanwhile Lazada agents take a few seconds to skim through your e-mail and copy-paste a reply without actually analyzing your concern. They just want to get through as many emails as they can (regardless if they actually offer any real help) so that they can pass you to the next agent or a senior agent. Calling their hotline will put you on hold for awhile or cut off.
Lazada has also recently changed how they evaluate returned items. Back then (6 months ago or so) if an item is under Satisfaction Guarantee, you can return that item NO QUESTIONS ASKED, granting you returned it within 14 days, with the proper filled up return form and all the tags, accessories, packaging, etc. Now you can’t. This would have been fair IF they changed the return policy details on their website but they haven’t. Lazada’s Satisfaction Guarantee claim has now become a misleading LIE.
Well, there you have it folks…I don’t think I could have described better how terrible Lazada PH really is…