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Yesterday, today, and for the whole of tomorrow, Takealot is running its ‘Ultimate Checkout Sale’.

Today’s sale focuses on deals on the most searched for products, as well as the highest-rated products, and tomorrow’s sale will showcase deals on the most wish-listed products.

What’s not to like, right?

When we wrote about the sale last week, we did say that shoppers should exercise caution, because Takealot has been accused of misleading consumers with so-called discounts during previous sale events.

In June 2018, Takealot was even called out by the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA), which ruled that Takealot’s Daily Deals listed price for a 55-inch 4K Samsung TV was misleading.

Earlier today, MyBroadband decided to take a look at some of the items featured on the sale:

MyBroadband investigated how Takealot’s Ultimate Checkout sale prices, as well as their standard prices, compare to deals from other online retailers.

For this comparison, we focused on tech products and measured Takealot’s prices against a variety of local tech distributors – including Makro, Wootware, Evetech, and Loot.

It should be noted that some of the competing deals were also listed as specials on their respective websites.

Tech products, measured against other local tech distributors, some of which also had their goods listed as on special.

OK, that sets the scene. Let’s see the first two products…

LG 55-inch UHD Smart TV

Takealot deal: R8,899 (Standard price: R11,999)

Best competing deal: R8,499 (Loot)

Dell 19-inch LED Monitor

Takealot deal: R999 (Standard price: R1,149)

Best competing deal: R999 (Incredible Connection)

Oops – not really saving those bucks.

The following three products compared are all hard drives, with Takealot’s sale coming in at no more than R60 cheaper for any of them.

On a Sony PlayStation Dualshock 4 v2 Controller, Takealot’s R919 is just R40 cheaper than the same product on Loot (R949).

The Grand Theft Auto V (PS4) game actually comes in at R50 cheaper on Loot (R419 on Takealot’s sale to R369 on Loot).

Heads up – I will never again order from Loot, after a series of terrible customer service and delivery experiences, but the price comparisons stand.

MyBroadband’s comparison finishes with Apple AirPods with Charging Case (an equal priced product was found on another site), and Beats by Dr Dre Solo 3 Wireless Headphones (R2 799 on Takealot, versus R2 999 on another site).

Now this is far from a comprehensive comparison, but some social media users have also pointed out discrepancies in the sale.

Take this tweet from yesterday:

The same user followed up with a second example:

The price is obscured above, but the Iconix price listed is R399 on the site itself, and Takealot is selling the same product for R499, claiming that is reduced from an original selling price of R899.

To be fair, in both of these examples, Takealot doesn’t necessarily set the selling price themselves. They pointed this out on Twitter in response to the above tweets:

Yes, fair, but this is why consumers looking for a bargain during a sale event need to pay attention.

Just because you’re being told the product you’re buying is dramatically reduced from some higher price doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. Takealot isn’t to blame for the pricing of the Iconix products above, for example, but your average person believes that the prices listed (both the ‘full’ price and the ‘sale’ price) are done so in good faith.

Also, not everyone is convinced that these most searched for products are completely accurate:

Given that I’m not exactly knowledgeable on the popularity of yellow Falke tights, I’m going to avoid this one, but the tweet above is echoed by many others expressing similar sentiments.

We don’t have a dog in this fight, and the Takealot delivery guys are very frequent visitors to our office, so nobody is saying you shouldn’t make use of the sale.

I’m sure there are great deals out there (Business Insider seems to think these are today’s standouts), but South African consumers need to stop blindly believing what we’re told by our online retail giants.

Google around, do your homework by checking out competitors, and then blow your month’s rent on things you don’t really need – it’s called being responsible.

Happy shopping.

[source:mybroadband]