My experience with Online Shopping during Sanitary Curfew

At this time of writing, Mauritius is still under Sanitary Curfew whereby only employees from essential services are allowed to work.

Thankfully many employees especially from Offshoring/Outsourcing sector, are still working with customers or partners abroad.

On the next day the first official case was announced, in a supermarket, overwhelmed by customers in large queues waiting impatiently, I did my groceries. Within three hours, we were finally done and fortunately we were well stocked until the next three weeks or so.

A few days later - all supermarkets were closed - as people in general were too careless without knowing the severity of the situation. They kept getting our of their houses and moving even with a national sanitary curfew.

As expected within three weeks or so, our stock decreased. I therefore took initiative to start looking for online shopping facilities. As such, I joined several Facebook groups such as Home Delivery during Covid 19 and awaited feedback from buyers. (I otherwise don't use Facebook much as it's a massive waste of time).

Winners

Meanwhile following the latest news and recommendations from the media, I tried Winners, which proved to be the worst. I first time I wanted to order, the site was already closed and the second time, even though my order was successful and I got a confirmation email, until now I've had no feedback except an email few days later notifying me that they won't be able to deliver.

EShop - Le Potager

Hearing good feedback from my friend, I created an account and ordered from EShop. However, let alone any confirmation mail, I heard nothing at all. I've seen on Facebook group that a number of orders were lost.

FoodMoris

With the number of online shopping proving unreliable and given the fact that I didn't want to go to any supermarket - especially with the re-opening rush - I started trying every service with good reactions. Otherwise, we would soon be out of stock, including basic necessities.

I ordered a basic pack with Foodmoris. Although the delivery took a few days more than expected, we finally got our food. This service was the most reliable at this time.

Bauducco

Bauducco biscuits was also reliable delivering almost in the amount of days they said.

iCare

I saw plenty of good feedback from iCare.mu and therefore decided to order a small pack to see if it was valuable. The payment process was quick, particularly with the Juice payment scan was present on the screen.

They delivered the products within three days. I therefore decided to order fruits also, which they delivered the next day. So far, the iCare provider has been the most effective and reliable for me.

Others

I also ordered from a local cakes shop which delivered the next day.

Conclusion

Mauritius has still a long way to go in terms of Online Shopping facilities even though the Covid 19 pandemy has drastically improved the overall experience. There are several battle tested eCommerce applications that merchants can use such as PrestaShop, wiiCommerce and Magento.

There are also cloud solutions such as Shopify which they can use to setup and start taking orders within hours.