Hello friends, today I will comment on a topic that has gained a lot of prominence in Cuba during the last five years: E-commerce. I believe that this activity plays a crucial role in the informatization process of Cuban society. Despite this, there are many gaps and dissatisfactions due to conditions (objective and subjective) that hinder its development. In this article I will deal specifically with what virtual stores represent for the vast majority of people who make use of these services.
In 2019, the first tests of the TuEnvio platform began, where the corporations CIMEX and Tiendas CARIBE were in charge of selling their products. At that time, the only payment gateway was Transfermovil and the items mainly sold were basic necessities, i.e.: food and toiletries. I quickly set up an account and started buying through the web in the virtual store of my province Holguín. Everything was going well, I made several purchases with home delivery and the delivery time was in accordance with what the supplier had established. Later on, the number of users increased and therefore the requests to the site were more frequent. More advanced users began to use macros and applications to automate purchases. The platform collapsed and DATACIMEX specialists, together with ETECSA, began maintenance work to correct the supposed vulnerabilities and security breaches that caused service congestion. Then COVID19 arrived on the island and stores began to sell in combos (a set of several items, i.e. slow-moving products). Currently TuEnvio is in its 2.0 version, with more and more restrictions, purchases can only be executed every 7 days and users and beneficiaries cannot be repeated during that period. It also offers sales in two currencies (CUP and MLC) and makes use of two payment gateways (Enzona and Transfermovil).
Pantalla de Iniciar sesión / Login screen | Pantalla Categoría: Combos / Category: Combos |
|---|---|
Plataforma TuEnvio 2.0 / TuEnvio 2.0 Platform
Other companies have joined this online activity, such as SASA and COPEXTEL: SASA and COPEXTEL, mainly make their sales from abroad (payments in USD). CUPET also sells liquefied gas cylinders through the web, another product with high demand and little supply. Nowadays it is a titanic task to add any product to the shopping cart, since all stores sell at a certain time and the merchandise is only available for a few seconds due to the high number of users and the scarce supply. To this is added the crisis with the transport, so the default delivery method most of the time is store pickup and to my understanding the main objective of this type of trade is to have home delivery. I personally believe that as long as these difficulties persist, virtual stores in Cuba far from being the desired solution, cause discomfort, stress and frustration in the vast majority of people who daily try to make use of this important but poorly implemented service.
Un Saludo para todos. / Greetings to all.
Las imágenes que no tienen referencia o fuente, son capturas de pantalla de las tiendas virtuales de las cuales soy usuario.
The images that do not have reference or source, are screenshots of the virtual stores of which I am a user.
Fotografía: 
Dispositivo Móvil: Xiaomi Redmi Note 11
Edición: Canvas
Traducción: DeepL
Photography:
Mobile Device: Xiaomi Redmi Note 11
Editing: Canvas
Translation: DeepL
