To truly test the quality of their global market initiative, last week I placed another order. This time I used  the AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping option for the delivery with 2-4 business days for delivery. I placed the order on December 4th which was Friday and surely enough the order was immediately fulfilled and shipped on the same day using UPS Worldwide Saver.

To my pleasant surprise, on Monday (Dec 7) morning when I checked on the tracking status, the package had been received, cleared customs and out for delivery. Monday afternoon the order arrived at my door. That’s 3 days or only 1 business day, pretty amazing! I am happy and can recommend to use AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping if you really want an item in a hurry and you are willing to pay extra.

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To do this, just look for International Shipping under Refine by and you should see a checkbox to filter the results. The cool thing is, Amazon seems to be able to detect your country even without an account. Most likely it works through IP detection.

AmazonGlobal is a program offered by the biggest e-commerce company in the world to ship orders directly from their US store/warehouse and have the customs fee estimated upfront.

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Hari Belanja Nasional: Indonesia’s Black Friday

This all began from bombardment of online and TV ads from Lazada for “Hari Belanja Nasional” or National Shopping Day which is basically a marketing campaign by Indonesia’s big e-commerce players to promote what would be similar to Black Friday in United States. The date is December 12 (12/12). They certainly went all out for this, placing the ads during TV broadcast prime times.

Out of curiosity, I started looking at Lazada for interesting items for me to add on the wish list then wait what would happen on the big day. While not as crazy as Black Friday deals that you would see from US-based e-tailers, Lazada offered a range of coupon vouchers with values ranging from US$16-400 depending on your shopping cart total value. Not bad, enough to persuade me to become a customer.

Product Catalog

Lazada Indonesia’s product catalog is quite extensive and you can see they have managed to bring in big brands, more than enough for anyone to find something they need or want. There are 13 main categories, ranging from customer electronics to sports and outdoor. Similar to Amazon, Lazada sells items direct and also from third party merchant partners.

In overall most of the products have decent information but still very far from adequate when you are seeing them as “Amazon of South East Asia” as some media claim.

1. Minimal specification details for their electronic products. Take LED TV for instance, most of them do not have information about input/output options which is quite essential in my opinion. You have to google and find it from other sites. Guess where I got mine? Amazon.
2. Censored review. I mean in a quite extreme way. Browsing through the catalog, I probably could only find one or two products with overall rating of 3 stars. Most of the products would be 4+ stars. Basically a statement, “everything we sell is great.” When I tried to add a review, after submitting it was pending for verification. No wonder.

Placing Orders

I ended up placing three orders. One was for a Yamaha soundbar valued at around US$625. The other order was a tricycle for my nephew’s long delayed birthday gift. Both were sold by third party merchants and not stocked directly by Lazada but qualified for free shipping. Checkout process was pretty straightforward, after creating an account, it asked for shipping and billing addresses, then payment method. It offers 4 options for payment:

1. Cash of Delivery (limited area and only items sold direct by Lazada)
2. Credit Card (Visa/MasterCard)
3. Bank Transfer
4. BCA KlikPay (e-payment product from one of the biggest banks in Indonesia)

In case you are wondering about the third order, I actually had to re-order the tricycle. Details below.

Issue #1: Order Processing Time

I chose to use credit card as payment because I thought it would be most convenient for me as the customer. The bank provider sent instant SMS notification immediately after the order had been placed. That quite settled that the transaction went through without any problem. An email was sent by Lazada to confirm the order and notify that the transaction was under verification process and I would be re-notified within 24 hours when the order was ready to be shipped.

My immediate question at the time was what needed to be verified? I thought the idea of using a payment gateway to accept credit cards was for instant verification and the amount should be automatically blocked from the credit card limit. I tried to follow their rules though.

Things got bad when after 24 hours I had no follow-up and nothing had changed with the order status. Contacting their customer service through live chat did not help either. The responses were slow, probably because they were serving other customers with similar cases, and they only followed the standard of procedures when responding the inquiries. I am pretty sure I could be more patient should they were able to actually explain the cause of delay transparently.

After bugging them for 2 days, my order was finally verified and forwarded to the supplier after almost 60 hours.

Issue #2: Order Cancellation

The other issue I had was caused by a mix-up after cancelling my second order. A couple of hours after ordering the tricycle, I noticed that price dropped over 10%. I suspected the merchant had just updated the price after receiving the order. Since my order was still under “verification” status, I contacted Lazada’s customer service to check if it would still be possible to cancel my order without getting my credit card charged. She said yes and after requesting my confirmation, she cancelled it. I then re-ordered the item with the latest and lower pice.

I was quite shocked when the next day I checked on my credit card’s Internet banking that the transaction that was supposed to be cancelled was still charged into my card. It seemed that the department who handled the transactions did not pay attention to orders’ statuses and just captured all outstanding transactions.

To make things worse, when it comes to this matter the customer service was practically only the listening ears and could not provide satisfying response to my frustration. They said that cancelled orders would be refunded within 14 working days. But that was not the point, I was disappointed that the supposed to be cancelled transaction had been captured in the first place. If this is their standard of operations, I think it is certainly something that can be improved.

They eventually did things right though. To avoid further disappointment from a customer, they expedited the refund process and it was credited into my credit card balance without 48 hours. They even called to explain about the mix-up and apologize. A very simple but valuable gesture.

Will I Order Again from Lazada?

While they are still not 100% there yet, I believe they are doing the right things in terms of offerings and ensuring customer satisfaction. I would probably do a few more test orders in less busy time (for them) to truly see their standard quality in handling the orders.

Serving potentially 300 million customers in Indonesia is not an easy job, especially since most of them are not completely familiar with pure B2C e-commerce models. However if they are doing it right, they may generate more revenue than Amazon. Just look at Alibaba.

If you google about Lazada you may find many blog and forum posts, mostly in Bahasa, about some terrible experiences by customers. But I am going to give them a benefit of the doubt. Changing how the market perceives e-commerce is challenging task. It is not just about acquiring the best price, but to be able to abandon going to malls to find the products you are looking for with the assurance if they are not as good and you expected you can simply return them with not much hassle.

It will be interesting to see how far e-commerce will grow in the country in the the next few years.

The Story Behind Lazada

(Excerpted from VentureBeat)

Lazada was founded by German incubator firm Rocket Internet and claims to be Southeast Asia’s “largest online shopping mall,” which means it’s very similar to online retailer Amazon in a market that’s growing like crazy. It’s known for selling electronics, apparel, cosmetics, books, and more to customers in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other countries in the area. And like Amazon, it also offers free shipping on many items, free returns (within 14 days), and more.

Lazada has raised over US$500 million to secure its position as a dominant force in e-commerce in Southeast Asia.

The post Join The Online Revolution: Experience with Lazada Indonesia appeared first on Michael Sunarlim.

Estimated import charges are displayed on the product page.

I have had good experience ordering through AmazonGlobal program, but have not tried it from eBay. I am pretty sure there will be too good of a deal that I cannot afford to miss in the future though. When that happen, I will be sure to share my impressions.

Any of you has tried it? Would appreciate it if you can share your experience.

The post eBay Global Shipping prgoram to match AmazonGlobal appeared first on Michael Sunarlim.

Their solution is called AmazonGlobal. The way it works is very simple, Amazon will send the order directly from their US store/warehouse and have the customs fee estimated upfront. This allows Amazon to ship to additional 65 countries around the world and hoping to compete with other e-commerce companies who are operating locally. I personally doubt they will be able to generate much revenue from here, compared to what they are already earning, it is more about prestige and as very early step to dominate global market.

Products Selection

It is very important to note that not all products, in fact only very small percentage of their massive catalog, which are eligible for AmazonGlobal shipping option. They are only items that are sold and shipped by Amazon.com and very likely the ones that qualify to enter by local customs.

You can also start by going to their AmazonGlobal page to browse the catalog with products that are eligible with this offer.

Ordering

I have gift certificate balance on my Amazon account. It is not a discount.

If you are already familiar with Amazon, there is nothing new here. You browse and search for the products you are looking for and add them to the shopping cart. Upon checkout, you will see the breakdown and total of your order that you will need to pay. Aside from the normally high shipping cost (from US to Indonesia), you will also find the Import Fees Deposit.

The Import Fees Deposit will be used to reimburse the carries for the import fees that they have paid on your behalf to the appropriate authorities (read: customs) of the destination country.

Amazon also offers two types of shipment:

1. AmazonGlobal Expedited Shipping (averages 5-10 business days)
2. AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping (averages 2-4 days)

My Experience

I had ordered with Amazon many times before, although usually for smaller items for direct shipping to Indonesia (without using AmazonGlobal) or asked a friend to bring it back from US during his travel there. But when I saw Philips Fidelio X1 at half the suggested retail price from $300 to $150 on Amazon’s Today’s Deals page and it was eligible for International shipping, I could not resist to order it. I threw in a Sandisk Cruzer 16GB as it almost added nothing to the shipping cost.

A total of $235.60 for $300 retail priced product, including shipping, import fees, and an extra USB stick with decent capacity. Not bad at all. Placed my order and then I waited.

Delivery

For carrier partner, Amazon worked with i-Parcel to track down the International shipment. It provided regular updates to the package, until it reached local customs. Then it was stuck for over a week, which I was not too surprised. After making several contacts with reps from i-Parcel regarding the status of customs clearance, my order finally arrived.

From the estimated delivery of 5-10 business days, it ended up to more like 20 business days which was still acceptable. It was more important for me to know the package was handled very well. The box of the headphones which was rather large was in perfect shape, no bend whatsoever or anything lost or tempered.

After nearly 6 weeks from the delivery date, I also received an email from Amazon that they had refunded an amount of $19.55 from the Import Deposit Funds. Wow, that makes the total order only $216.05!

Conclusion

Is ordering through AmazonGlobal shipping recommendable? YES, but only if you cannot find the products in your local stores or if the total price after additional fees is noticeably less than what you can grab locally.

Happy shopping!

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