Shopping Sites With Jamaican Dollar Prices
There seems to be a growing trend with online shopping sites to quote product prices in local currencies, in our case Jamaican Dollars.
This is a great idea, however is it really what we want?
Let’s weigh the pros and cons…
Pros
Gives a good idea
Ok by seeing the prices in Jamaican dollars it really does help us to put things perspective. We can get an idea of what this costs in a local way. With USD prices very often we don’t really convert the pricing properly in our heads and the prices seem cheap.
Comparison to buying local
By seeing the prices in local Jamaican dollars we can get a sense as to how it compares to buying items locally. Even though we have to add mailbox costs such as shipping, duty and taxes we can still get an idea of how that item compares to buying it in Jamaica.
Cons
Can’t compare to other online shopping sites
One of the biggest problems with this local currency thing is that not all shopping sites offer it. In fact not many do. So if you want to compare shopping sites and prices it becomes a pain. Now you have to be getting out the calculator to see if prices compare well. Too much work for people who just want to shop and feel good about the price they got.
The converters don’t work!
We’ve been to quite a few shopping sites where the Jamaica dollar prices are way off.
In the above example from Children’s Place, the site clearly does not convert properly. In fact it has almost doubled the price that it shows.
The only thing that we can think of is that the site is calculating what the cost might be if they ship the item directly to Jamaica. But even then, we doubt they are including customs duty in that, and what if we wanted to ship this to our mailbox and not directly to Jamaica.
U.S. Dollars is how we shop online
In the end, most of us shopping online from Jamaica are accustomed to shopping in U.S. dollars. So converting the prices to Jamaican dollars doesn’t quite help us. We kind know if US$49 is too much to pay for a Polo shirt. But we don’t quite know if JMD$4,500 is too much. That’s because we want to compare those prices with other online stores.
Jamaicans have become somewhat experts at online shopping through mailbox providers. Most of these online stores don’t even realise that we shop through mailbox providers and even talk about how they ship directly to Jamaica. The local price quotes are a cool feature, but the truth is we don’t really need it.
To avoid any confusion or errors, simply find the location setting (usually in the top right corner of a shopping site) and select USA. This will restore the pricing back to US dollars and restore you back to how you are accustomed to shopping.