Be Careful What You Are Buying!

In Lagos, people hardly have the spare time for planned shopping. Impulsive buying is the order of the day. A lot of people shop as they transmute or go from one place to the other. Traffic snarl which is a hallmark of the city has provided opportunities for street traders to sell all kinds of wares along major roads.

Bus stops also boast of mobile shops that appear and disappear at some times of the day. The mobile markets offer shoppers-on-the-move the opportunity to do their shopping as they get down or board vehicles to their destinations. Merchandise they traded on, vary widely – foodstuff, fast foods, clothes, shoes, electronics, mobile phones, books, wrist watches etc.

In these highly dispersed markets are traders who take advantage of the mobility of the markets to sell dysfunctional, vandalized and fake products to hapless, impatient shoppers. Their modus involve drawing attention of traders with sweet sounding messages, bells and so on. Once they have attracted the attention of passersby, a crowd of shoppers would begin to gather, swelling the ranks, some buying and others just window shopping.

The products that such traders sell are those that cannot be tested or their workability easily ascertained immediately. Even when they are tested, they still play pranks on their victims. Most times, those who bought can only discover that they are not functioning until they get to where they can be tested, which is usually their homes, like electronics and phones.

A friend once bought a phone along one of such markets at the very busy “Ikeja Under Bridge” in Lagos, very happy that she had made a good buy going by the price and the cleanliness of the phone, a Nokia model, which was tested and working. When she got home she tried to charge it but discovered nothing was happening. On opening the cover she found that the inside components of the phone have been replaced with “fufu”, ready to eat cassava flour, a local delicacy. The next day, she got to where she bought it and the seller and his shop had moved to an unknown destination, probably to fool some other people and get their hard earned money. It was obvious that while handing over the phone to my friend he swapped the good one with the “fufu’ phone.

Another friend on his way home one evening came upon a gathering of shoppers around a trader selling electronic torchlights. People were buying these torchlights in a beautiful pack as if they would run out of circulation. My friend also bought and on getting home put it on charging, and the charging light came on. He charged for six hours as recommended in the manual. When he put it on thereafter as there was power failure, the light did not come on but when power was restored and he plugged it, he discovered that the light came up, meaning it only works when there is electricity supply. It means that the purpose of buying it which is to use it when there is power outage was defeated. Advice line: Be sure of the workability of what you are buying before you part with your money or ensure that the product you paid for is not swapped when it is being handed to you if you do not want to make some dubious trader richer with your hard earned money.