+ A
A -
Asif Iqbal
Doha
With online shopping gaining traction across Qatar, freight forwarders like Q-Post and Aramex are extending lucrative offers that make e-commerce deliveries from almost anywhere in the world affordable.
While, Aramex has cut its lifetime membership fee from $45 to $10, Q-Post offers the same for free. With these memberships, shoppers can make online purchases in countries where these firms are present and use their services to have the items delivered in Qatar.
"There has been a surge in online shoppers in the country, but most of them use e-commerce websites such as Amazon and e-bay that do not ship items directly to Qatar," an Aramex sales representative told Qatar Tribune.
He said the"Shop & Ship" service of Aramex assigns users a unique code and a local address for e-commerce websites to deliver the purchases. Aramex will then ship the items to Qatar, he added.
The company has offices in the US and most of Asian and European countries such as Canada, France, Germany and the UK.
After the success of the Shop & Ship service, Qatar Post has introduced its own e-commerce service called"Connected". Currently, the service is available only for purchases made in the US and the UK, but it offers a discount of 56 percent on the base shipping charge from the US and 35 percent from the UK.
Besides, the service offers a free 21-day storage facility at its global warehouses, letting users ship multiple items with different local delivery dates, in one go to Qatar.
The Q-Post service has also tied up with Qatar Airways to introduce"Qmiles" offer that awards points against each delivery. The points can be redeemed for a range of benefits from Qatar Airways, including complimentary flights, upgrades or excess baggage allowances, and for purchases made at Qatar Duty Free at the Hamad International Airport in Doha or Oryx Galleria.
Meanwhile, Aramex has bundled its Shop & Ship service with a promotion offer called 'Flex'. Under this, the users can pay $119 and get charged for every 100 grams instead of the usual 500 grams.
"You can expect the competition to get stiffer in the coming months. More offers will be announced to attract and retain customers," the Aramex sales executive said.
