Maachla.com Review – Take Two
Name: Maachla.com
Following our initial review of Maachla.com, the guys at Maachla took the time to go through our opinion of the site and offer another chance for trying them out after the new enhancements, and after their award winning “Best Website in Kuwait” in Sheikh Salim Al-Ali Informatics Award.
Shopping Experience:
So we did give it a couple of tries. The first was for some item that was out of market for some time, and we found the item on Maachla.com and placed the order, interested to see the outcome. Shortly when the delivery time arrived, I got a call that I couldn’t attend to. Calling back their hotline, your number gets recorded and you hear a message telling you someone will call you shortly. Later on a real nice friendly guy called back and told me that specific item is out of stock, and offered an alternative if I was interested. I declined and thanked him for his call. This tells us a good thing about their customer service quality, and a bad thing about their inventory system. It’s not tied to the real Mishref Co-Op database.
The second time we ordered few regular items, including some beverages. The shortage in varieties, and availability of all size options in the beverages section did not make the experience as good as we hoped it would. Below we give quick brief about each part of the experience.
Registration:
Again, to try adding items to the basket you have to register. To register you have to give in your mobile number. How many people would wanna do that before they try out the site? Ask for these info at checkout only. Get users to try and love what you have worked hard for!
Delivery:
As explained earlier, you get to select the delivery hour up to two weeks in advance, but you cannot select the current hour for delivery. It has to be at least during the next coming hour, so even if it’s only 9:01 PM, you would have to select 10-11 PM delivery time sot. That’s the only bad part, and otherwise, their delivery is quite on time from my one time experience.
I would suggest however that in their schedule, unavailable time slots become non-selectable rather than reloading the page and coming back with a popup error message.
Inventory:
This was so disappointing for me, as it makes you unsure if what you place in your basket is available or not, which is really a bad experience. You have the option however per item to allow substitute product in case your preference is not available. Good to have, but I’m surprised this option is selected by default. Maachla should not assume I am ok with a substitute of their choice. I should be asked to approve it. So careful when you’re checking out. If you don’t want it, uncheck the allow substitute boxes.
At all rates, I believe effort should be put into tying Maachla inventory system live with Mishref Co-Op one for live item and pricing update.
Variety:
If they are operating from their own store, I would understand. But securing the deal with Mishref Co-Op should mean much larger variety of items, that is as close to shopping at Mishref Co-Op experience. In my case however, I had to browse between brands, select my second or third brand preference, because the item that’s available in Mishref Co-Op is not available in the online store. And I wish it ends there. Even when you find the brand you want, finding the size you want is another task. The squeezed item photo does not help identify it, and many sizes are missing. And with soft drinks, when you open a can, you either drink it now, or throw it away. You can’t store it for later. However even trivial items like PEPSI did not have all the common sizes, I had to go with another one, and I couldn’t even get a box set, I had to order individual cans. 7-Up was not available at all for some reason as well.
How It Should Be?
I think it would be best if a single item like PEPSI would open a PEPSI page, and I get to select per unit or box, and the size I want. All available sizes should be there logically.
Customer Service:
Customer service quality was really high, you would feel comfortable speaking to the guy over the phone and feel he’s happy to help. The idea of registering your number once you call the hotline for them to get back, while neat, is a bit inconvenient for me the customer however. When I call, I might want to talk to the guy now as I will be busy in 5 minutes or so, and this is exactly what happened to me. I called, they saved my number. I had to finish some work and be away from the phone when they called back. I call again, have to wait for their call, only to get an international call by the time they’re calling me back.
My guess is this method saves them the cost of having customer service people on the standby 24/7 when they don’t have that heavy load. This way they can arrange for the call at their own time, but it comes at a cost I guess.
Pricing
This is where is struck me hard. At checkout, you get to see this confusing message.
So what they are literally saying here is you have no way of knowing the final bill until the items are delivered to your door. At least that’s how I understand it, and the way I do, it doesn’t make any sense, and if I don’t like the bill, I have the right to refuse payment then. And to approve or decline it, this means that I have to be present and cannot just hand over the money to the housemaid and head out to work.
I most certainly do not believe this term is there for Maachla to abuse, but it shows a kind of uncertainty in their item pricing and lack of price update. But for me the customer, how can I trust such a system? If I sense a difference in the bill, I have to manually compare each and every item. This is also related to the lack of an inventory system.
e-List:
The e-List is a quick way for you to write down items you want, quantity, size, and brand. You can leave the size and brand open, go to checkout quickly, and they would try to match your preference.
This I believe is a nice and easy way to finish your shopping, similar to handing over your grocery list for someone to do the shopping for you. I bet you can even specify here small PEPSI can and get it as well! Problem is, you have no clue about the pricing once again! A call before delivery would be good to confirm the final price.
Conclusion:
We believe Maachla.com has got all the hard elements of the equation in place. The store, the physical items, the delivery capacity. What they need is just to tie it stronger together. Have an updated inventory system, even if it’s a nightly update only, that would still be much better than the current situation. Give people the same physical experience by providing what’s already there. Faster and more AJAXed experience is always better as well.
If the problem of varieties is at least solved, and a guarantee of price range, I guess I could rely on this service for at least pre-packaged products. Fruits and vegetables are a different matter I say for now.
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