For those of you who like buying stuff online (from what I will here OPEN e-commerce sites), let me give you a tip. The items you see there impose a charge of between 2 - 20% on the seller, technically, like the Liars will tell you. Yea. But it is actually the buyer that pays as the price gets marks up before quoting it or the site automatically applies it depending on the service. One site's charges range from 2% on mobile phones to as much as 20% on fashion items. The fascinating one is baby effects, attracting as much as 13.5%! If you don't understand what this means then read a bit longer.

For a regular market price on a pair of shoes at NGN5000, the price on an e-commerce site would start from NGN6000. Then throw in the shipping/delivery charge. Different seller packages might affect the price also. This is why you see the same exact product with two different prices (apart from being sourced differently).

So, when you see all them discount on the items on their sites, don't be deceived. As a rule of thumb, if I must buy any tangible thing online I ensure that it has at least 50% off, to estimate that it might be close to, or in some rare cases, below the open market price.

Well, it's no wonder these markups are put in. The service providers are for profit and they do not pass offering containers. What I do not understand is why baby effects can get to double digits. I would think that luxury stuff should have more presuming that the prospective buyers can afford it.

PS: On the other hand, some e-commerce sites might actually come cheaper than the average open market price. This is usually when a site is owned by a merchant. The logic is that they would want encourage you buying online rather than walking into their shop. It's simple. The more they sell online the less they need physical stores and the attendant cost of running them. For this reason they are ready to encourage their customers to buy online. Not all of them have this logic in place so you have to gauge it first.