Bidorbuy's biggest challenge

So I might be biased because of my history with BoB but I can summarise:

- nicest and most honest people you will ever meet, honestly it remains one of the best working environments I ever experienced

- the sellers are douchebags especially on their forum but those are the sellers selling very niche items or dropshippers - take their names and avoid dealing with them.

- if an item has Buyer Protection you are ok

- bidorbuy deserves some credit for helping shops like GeeWiz and others (even Takealot...yessir, they have a now dormant account: https://www.bidorbuy.co.za/seller/1324291/TAKEALOT) find their feet. Although, funny story, douchebags that they are Takealot will look at you in an interview and say "bidorbuy? never heard of them". A bullet dodged by me because of a restraint of trade but that's another story.

The only reason I do not shop at Bidorbuy myself is shipping fees. I'm loyal to my wallet and Takealot's free delivery is a big discount every single time. Unfortunately.
 
Hamster said:
So I might be biased because of my history with BoB but I can summarise:

- nicest and most honest people you will ever meet, honestly it remains one of the best working environments I ever experienced

- the sellers are douchebags especially on their forum but those are the sellers selling very niche items or dropshippers - take their names and avoid dealing with them.

- if an item has Buyer Protection you are ok

- bidorbuy deserves credit for helping shops like GeeWiz and others (even Takealot...yessir, they have a now dormant account: https://www.bidorbuy.co.za/seller/1324291/TAKEALOT) find their feet. Although, funny story, douchebags that they are Takealot will look at you in an interview and say "bidorbuy? never heard of them". A bullet dodged by me because of a restraint of trade but that's another story.

The only reason I do not shop at Bidorbuy myself is shipping fees. I'm loyal to my wallet and Takealot's free delivery is a big discount every single time. Unfortunately.
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GeeWiz is excellent. HDDMan is excellent. They are probably the only two BoB sellers I will always support if I need a HDD or something else from GeeWiz. There may be others, but in my opinion they are hard to find on BoB as you always need to look at fine print before finding them.
 
One more thing , why not make the questions and answers to and from sellers public on the post , then the buyer can make a more informed decision
 
People that complain about BoB's systems aren't using them. I've reported items before and they get taken down quickly. The biggest issue with BoB is probably that they take 5% which is a big margin especially on electronics so sellers try to inflate the shipping costs.
 
Ragnarök said:
One more thing , why not make the questions and answers to and from sellers public on the post , then the buyer can make a more informed decision
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They had that feature but it was removed due to abuse. I think the Karens used the questions to complain.
 
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Bidorbuy is good for some things but not all things. If you only deal with sellers who have a 95% + rating and who sold many items you will be fine. The final order value fee that they charge which is literally fees on your shipping cost is ridiculous. They already charge pay up to 10% commission for posting in certain categories and now sellers have to factor in a fee on top of the shipping cost. What a racket.
 
Swa said:
People that complain about BoB's systems aren't using them. I've reported items before and they get taken down quickly. The biggest issue with BoB is probably that they take 5% which is a big margin especially on electronics so sellers try to inflate the shipping costs.
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Its 6.6% - 10% . Then they tax shipping and insurance fees for another 6.61%...they use the eufemistic term "final order value".
 
Last edited:
Jamie McKane said:
Bidorbuy's biggest challenge

Bidorbuy is one of South Africa’s oldest and best-known ecommerce platforms and allows people to buy and sell virtually anything online.

Founded in 1999 as an online auction website, it has grown to become one of South Africa's top online shopping destinations.
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Another plus point for Takealot over Bidorbuy is the fact that you ONLY pay one delivery charge where at BoB you must pay various sellers
 
rvZA said:
One of my biggest issues with BoB is the fact that most of the sellers appear to be dropshippers. I think, this is where their problem lies. These people seems to circumvent BoB's systems and advertise their products as local products. If you check their shipping terms you will find it could take months before the product is delivered, even if the system shows 1 week, as they import products.
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Yep +1. I ordered something and it took like 3 months to arrive. I didn't realize they didn't stock it locally.
So I paid nearly double for something that I could order on eBay and get in the same time frame.

I then gave them a bad rating and then they dispute the rating.
BoB revoked my rating because apparently, not having local stock and being a drop shipper is perfectly fine.

My review was simply stating that it is pointless to buy something and wait for them 3 months to ship it. That I could get it for half on eBay and it would be no different.

But nope, I can't complain about it, review revoked and positive rating given without my say so.
At that point, I realized BoB was a joke and never used them since.

I think their model is so broken that they need these drop shipping companies to survive and therefore protect them over the customers that are getting f@#ked over
 
JustAsk said:
Its 6.6% - 10% . Then they tax shipping and insurance fees for another 6.61%...they use the eufemistic term "final order value".
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When did this change?
 
5% was already unsustainable in the electronics categories. This is just insane. And this comes after I had discussions with them that if they charged more reasonable fees that made it profitable sellers won't inflate their shipping fees where they claimed their fees were far less than Ebay's.

Looks like BoB is going the same route as Takealotofmoney. Why I can't find decent prices for GPUs any more and all second hand stuff costs more than retail.
 
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