Your Guide To Saving More on Yaga​

Yaga is an app that allows you to sell and buy secondhand items across South Africa. The cool thing is that Yaga holds the funds of the sale until the buyer confirms via the app that they have received the order, so it significantly reduces scamming.

Here’s how to maximise your savings.

1. Bundle up, buttercup!

When buying something from Yaga, buyers have to pay a “Buyer Protection Fee.” This is R14.95 + 5% of the cost of the item for every transaction.

When buying an item from a seller, they may have turned on bundling, which lets you buy more items but only pay for shipping once. BUT you will still have to pay the Buyer Protection Fee for every transaction.

A better way to buy multiple items from one seller is to send them a direct message via the Chat With Seller button and ask them to create a bundle for you. They will then create one product listing at the price of all the products you want to buy. You can buy that one “product” but they will then ship everything in the bundle to you, saving you the multiple Buyer Protection Fees.

2. Like all the items that you like

This sounds more complicated than it is. If you find an item you like but don’t want to buy straight away, you can hit the little heart button in the right hand corner of the product image. This will then save the item to your Favourites and you can easily find it again.

The other benefit of liking items is that, if the price of the item is reduced, you will get a notification of the price drop. This can help you save, but remember that each item is only available once – so once it’s gone, it’s gone.

3. Like stores with items you love

If you find a Yaga store with lots of items you love, make sure to like the store to add it to your favourites. If you do this, you will receive a notification every time the seller adds new items to their store, making it easier to bundle up on products you love.

I love to do this for stores which sell items in my clothing and shoe sizes because the chances are high that they will add more items in those sizes in the future.

4. Make use of the "Make An Offer" feature

Under each post in Yaga, you’ll see a “Buy” button and a “Make An Offer” button. 

When you make an offer, a message gets sent to the seller who can then either accept the offer, decline the offer or make a counteroffer. 

You can make an offer of up to 30% less than the listed price, keeping offers realistic and preventing people from making offers of R0.

Many sellers are open to negotiation on product costs, especially if you want to buy more than one item. Be reasonable in your offers though, you don’t want to offend them with ridiculous prices!

You can also DM sellers to ask if they have any active coupon codes for their store.

5. Look for what you need

If you love a good deal, it can be tempting to go crazy on Yaga and buy lots and lots of items you don’t really need. Make a mindful effort to search only for the items you need and keep your purchases within your budget.

6. You can't just buy clothes on Yaga

You can buy almost anything on Yaga! I have bough a Nespresso machine, a DVD machine, a laminator and lots of books on Yaga too, at great savings (and everything works beautifully!). 

Search for other items you might need that you can give a new home to.

Want to try it out?

Yaga has a website, but you’re going to get the best experience if you download the app. 

You can check out my Yaga store here, to get a feel for the app and start shopping!

Karin Meyer
Karin Meyer
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