Kalea is a furniture store in Guatemala that pretends to be more upscale and “cool”. Some of their items are pretty nice, others are just marked up 300% for no reason. At any rate, for a while, they had no functional website (just an “under construction” page). Well, I recently checked their site (www.kalea.com.gt), and was joyed to find out that, alas, they have a product listing. Yay! Now I could see if there is anything new or good to buy without driving downtime and wasting time in the store. Was I wrong.

First, the product gallery consists of one crappy photo of the product. Second, the description (in all caps for no apparent reason), consists of one short line, such as “Wooden console. Metal legs. Polished wood finish.” This, coupled with the crappy pictures, ensures you have no idea what the product is. I've looked at tables and I have no clue if they are small two-foot night stands or great hall dining tables. Silly. But even so, I could probably get some clue if they had a product I was interested, and then go down to the store to inspect and buy. Not quite.

Kalea has decided NOT to put prices on their site. Instead, they expect you to “request a quote” for every item you might be interested in. Now, their prices range from $30 - $1500 (or more) for furniture, and sometimes their prices are just outright crazy (say, their rugs, which are 3 times more expensive than the exact same rug in a store across the street). Thus, knowning the price becomes even more critical. “Hey, that looks like a nice light. Oh wait, $300 for a lamp? Forget it.” Also, before sending a quote, they ask you to fill in a form full of your info (rather than just an email address). So, I wrote them “Why the hell are there no prices”? Here's their response (they responded in English):

”Thanks for writing. The registration is needed so we can have your real information. Our website is intended for information only, this is a e-business site and not e-commerce site. If you can see, the cart is used to make a quote (Cotización), we will receive the list of products that you are interested on, and in a short time we will send you an email with the quote. We are using our site as a catalogue of products, they can be at sale, promotion, or not in store (but we can export them for you), so the prices may vary, and that is why we don´t post them.”

Don't you love that last line? I guess they've never heard of databases that have the UPDATE command, or perhaps that you can actually edit data. Also amusing is the phrase “this is a e-business site and not e-commerce site“, as if I'm supposed to say “Oh, I'm sorry; now I understand.“ Sigh.