13. October 2008 by admin.

KIJIJIJIJIJIJIIIIJJIIIII……….who the hell came up with that name?! wow, that was really creative! I guess they just couldn’t find a free domain in the .com area…

This is one hell of a project, I tell ya… did they got any investment? I have no idea, but I don’t know for how long they will be around…

Ok, lets start with the front page that you get to when you type in www.kijiji.com, you get a map and a list of locations… or a choice to switch to Canadian site… OK, that was somewhat smart, not the most important part, looks good, but that’s about it…

Now, I got to the site, wondered around, and guess what, I couldn’t even read about the company, who they are, what was the idea, what they do, etc. no Privacy Policy, no Terms of Use, so what they collect personal data, and do with it whatever the  hell they want? where did my privacy promise go to? what happened with the Terms of Use? I can do on this site everything? no responsibility needed? hmm… ok, I guess they didn’t think that one through yet… but I guess its all good, untill they get a court order to do so, just like Google got before they posted the Privacy Policy on their initial search page.

Let’s get in, shell we?

Oh! here we go… my choice, New York! good choice  I say :o) and here I found what I was looking for, About Kijiji, Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy… at least they were smart enough to post it there… good, forgiven!

About Kijiji “The word “Kijiji” (pronounced key-gee-gee) means “village” in Swahili. This word captures the essence of what we are creating—a community where members can connect with one another to exchange goods, ideas, and services.”

Interesting concept… but the problem is… I havent seen any community, or exchange… let’s move on…

The core business/service of this site is just like Craigslist, classified Ads… which is great! amazing! I Love It!!!! But, BIG but…

As you may know, I’m a designer, well known, but yet… still hunt for projects here and there, very selective, but still hunt for them… you know, with all the recognition and awards, projects still don’t come to you on daily basis as you’d like them to be.

So, I have a guy working for me part time from his home, his duty is to surf the internet for about 3,4 hours a day and go through this widely known Classifieds web sites and hunt for projects, meaning go into the section of people/companies looking for professional services, and need my type of services. And he simply send a standard format of an e-mail that in short tells about me, my achievements, experience, knowledge, my portfolio and contact details.

Simple? Yes! Working? Yes!

Craigslist is one of the best such sites on the internet to date! It is clear, always relevant search results, and easy to find anything… I must say this… 500 stars to Gragslist!!!

If it helps other freelancers, I use such sites like; GetAFreelancer, iFreelance, LinkedIn, and many more…

Anyway, one of those days, I call my part timer and tell him to try one week on this new site that I’ve found, called Kijiji.com, and he normally keeps me updated on daily basis of what he found how many e-mails he sent, etc. a day goes by, two days go by… I don’t hear from the guy… I’m confused, did he quit without even letting me kniw? he’s not that type of guy… I call him and ask what is going on? why didn’t you call?

Hes answer “Mr. Grin, listen, I’ve been going crazy on this site, I’ve been searching for the past two days and can’t find anything…” What do you mean you can’t find anything? this site should be very similar to craigslist! “well, I’m going through the section of te Jobs and can’t find any requests…” I get really confused… and tell him, ok, drop the subject and go to craigslist…

This is getting really out of the normal… so I get on to Kijiji, and start looking myself… and what do you know… my guy was right! Ok, lets do this step by step together… type in the address bar www.kijiji.com, got it, cool, choose lets say New York (soory, i love this city :o)), ok, got that one as well, now we see 3 columns titles; For Sale, Community, Cars & Vehicles, Housing, Jobs, Pets, Services, Personals, Events, Want Ads, Free Stuff. We are interested in Jobs, ok, under that title we find Graphic, Web Design, ok so far so good… click on Graphic, Web Design… and what do you know… pages upon pages of people OFFERING such services, and nothing, and let me say this again, NOTHING, about people/companies looking for such services… WOW!

This is really stupid! this is really aggravating! You get into a section where your healthy logic tells you that there are people/companies who are postings adds, in hope to find such services that you offer, but no, it is not the case… all you see is other designers hunting for the same as you are… where is the logic? what is the point posting an ad in a place you know people are looking for project/jobs offerings? I don’t get it!

There must be something screwed-up here, either the users of this site is so stupid that don’t understand where to post, either the users of this site are again too desperate and are posting just anywhere just to get any job/project, either the site is screwed-up that it has no filtering system to understand which posting should go where…

Well, in either case, I took the initiative, and wrote a message to Kijiji team explaining to them that this is bad, like really bad and they should consider fixing it somehow or improving the sites logical syste. Do you think I got an e-mail back from them? NO! no notification that they got my message no Thank you e-mail, nothing!

That’s a really wrong thing to do, this is really “responsible” attitude to business operations.

No words anymore, I don’t know anymore how to deal with such horrible sites, claim to be what they are not! and far from being!

Go backto school, learn a thing or two about how to keep your customers happy and coming backto you, online business is not just uploading a site, and think that you’d become a millionaire from that… it is hard work, lots of hours, customers happy feedbacks, and much more…

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