A couple of weeks ago I came across an activity on BlogAdda to review Quikr, the offer was to buy something worth Rs.5000 or less, blog about it and get the amount reimbursed. Sounds cool no? So, I applied and got selected. (OK, I gotta say this, so here goes - This post is a part of Quikr activity at BlogAdda)
However let me say this upfront, I didn't buy anything even after a lot of searching, but since I'd done all the homework, I figured 'review toh banta hai'. :)
Let's begin where it all begins, at the beginning... :P
In the hope of buying something [for free :D] I headed over to Quikr. The site prompts the first time visitor to choose the city they live in, it offers a match and a lot of options.
Choosing a city causes the pop-up to disappear and the next pop-up to appear.
The pop-up for choice of city made sense but the pop-up about the latest TV ad was irksome. I didn't need to see that or waste my time getting past it! I'd have preferred heading into the site directly.
Once past the TV ad, I landed up on the main page. The page is well laid out and quite clean. A quick route to seeing something is offered along with category choices for buying. There are also the most popular categories listed out if you need it.
Clicking on the Sign-in/register option led to another pop-up which gave me options to login or register. The sign-up process is simple and short with just the right questions being asked. You'll need to intimate if you are an individual or a business, provide your email id, mobile number, current city and create a password.
Since a login is not needed for buying and really only needed to tracking a sale, an extra step to register or sign-in makes sense. However I'd have liked to see the city being choose by default, especially since I choose that as soon as I landed on the site.
The buyer or seller can verify themselves by giving a missed call on a number provided using the mobile number given at the time of registration. I'd have preferred an MS or a call from Quikr to the number I gave as my calling them didn't work out and I couldn't complete verification.
Completion of registration took me to 'My Dashboard'. Like I said before registration works best for selling, the dashboard does not have much utility for buyers, unless you have email alerts for products maybe.
Sign-up complete I headed back to the home page to see what I could find to buy. I had a couple of things I wanted in mind. 1. a Bose speaker with iPod dock, 2. a Kindle
Quikr offers three ways to find a product -
1. Search
The search option which when you start typing gives you recommendations.
2. Categories
A grid of categories to choose from on the home page that help you find your product of choice. Clicking on a category brings up a list of further options to choose from in the category.
3. Alerts
Creating an alert for something you want.
I chose the Electronics & Appliances category which led me to further choices between laptops, kitchen appliances, and other options. There is also a fast search option where you can choose the appliance, the locality and your budget to get quick results.
Next I chose the music systems option. Quikr offers further options to refine your search in the sub-category. You can choose the brand, the price-range, the condition, the location and posting time to help you condense the results.
A choice of Bose and pricing in ascending order led me to a few Bose docks. Most of them were out of my budget but I did find one at Rs.4,000. (A quick note - the brand option to refine search worked but most other options didn't make any difference to the results, especially when I tried defining my budget.)
However as soon as I sent the seller a message, the ad disappeared and I couldn't find it again after. :(
After this hiccup, the search began anew to find something to buy and I next headed into a search for Kindles. This time I choose to search using the search bar.
I got 26 results but when I tried sorting based on price, I got thrown out with the message "Unfortunately, there are no ads in this category right now."
Not to be deterred I started to manually scan for price on the list and started calling sellers in my budget. I called 4 people selling kindles and each one of them said it had already been sold. :(
And with that ended my saga of trying to buy something on Quickr. But before I go into a list of pros and cons, let me also list out my experience with the Quikr mobile app for android.
I found the Quickr app in the Play store and clicked install to get a list of permissions the app required. The list of permissions is really long, even longer and scarier than the Facebook Messenger list!
I'm still undecided on whether I did the right thing when I gave the app all those permissions.
The app works quite like the site and is easy to use. However I think the app would work better for selling than buying as you could take a picture of the product with your phone and upload it right from there along with details.
Selling anything on Quikr is a simple two screen process. The process as it is is easy and quick but since I haven't sold anything, I can't say much about the quickness of the sale. :D
Pros -
- The site and app are simple and easy to use.
- The system to setup something to sell is easy.
- The layout of the site and products in easy on the eye.
Cons -
- Most products though listed are already sold. A way to track and remove sold items from the site would be helpful.
- Some of the filtering options do not work when scanning listings.
- Though the catalogue is extensive and categorised, finding what you want is still difficult. Searching is easier but even that does not work to perfection.
Overall -
Quikr is just another classifieds site, nothing specific that makes it stand out or be special. For that matter it would makes sense both when buying and selling to spread the net and use other classifieds sites too. That said Quikr could be a useful site, sometimes. :D
Have you used Quikr? Bought or sold anything? What did you think of it?
