Extremely Bad Service

In January 2021, I bought a Cellphone from your store at Hatfield Shopping Mall and I later took out the insurance on offer in-store. However, after a few months (November 2021) the phone started becoming troublesome and not operational at all. I subsequently called the Call Centre to book the Cellphone in for repairs as it was still under warranty. I duly kept on paying the insurance. After extensive communication, with all and sundry at Finrite Insurance Administrators (Ackermans Insurance). To this day, five (5) months later, I am none the wiser, as the phone had never been collected nor had anyone given me instruction to hand in the phone anywhere. Then the Customer Care Agents at Finrite Insurance Administrators, there were many, took it upon themselves and vowed to resolve the matter and get direction from senior management as to a way forward. However, after almost five (5) months I am still at square one and never heard from the management either.

When I called afterwards, to enquire about the progress on my matter, each person answering your call shifts the responsibility and promises to investigate and get back to you with a resolution.

However, they never revert to you and you have to call back again and invariably you speak to a different person and you have to relay the whole story again to this different person. I put it to them, that I consider it to be totally preposterous the excuses they come up with each time I call and the atrocious levels of service which I am subjected to. Invariable the person on the other end would also commit to resolve the matter on my behalf. That is of course just lip service to get me off the line. In the process, you spend on average 10 minutes on the phone, spending your own money on the call, with no joy in the end.

Finrite Insurance Administrators, keeps me in limbo the whole time, as they never keep promises to contact me regarding progress on the matter. They jump around only when I call into the Call Centre claiming that they were working on the matter, but I surmise that as soon as the call is dropped, he gives me the “Middle Finger Salute”. I could only surmise that people at Finrite had the propensity for this behaviour and probably subscribes to the notion that certain sectors of the community do not have the fortitude to complain when they are treated with such disdain, as they seemed confident that there would not be any repercussions resulting from their conduct. I cannot express enough the depth of my profound disappointment at the service to which I had been subjected to. I, therefore, beg the following questions;

• “How many other customers are being subjected to similar treatment, but opts to rather not pursue the matter, because they might not have the fortitude to do so?” • “Is it beneficial for me or any other person for that matter to be a customer of Ackermans, when you are subjected to this level of service and alternatively would management, personally tolerate this kind of service were they in my position? • “Was I being treated in a fair and equitable manner, which is in line with the ethos and the values, which the company aspires to?” • “Am I perhaps being facetious in assuming that good customer service is reserved only for a select few or a certain sector of the community for that matter?” • Will I be justified in escalating the matter to an alternate external dispute resolution body in the event that the matter does not get resolved via this internal process? It is unfortunate that I had to proverbially; “Rock the Boat” again in order to air my grievance, but I gave Ackerman’s Senior Management ample opportunity to remedy this situation in the interest of fair and equitable customer service. Furthermore, after conferring with my fellow colleagues, some also in the service field and they all concur that it goes totally against the grain of what “Great Customer Service” and “Good Governance” are all about. If this is the service that customers are subjected to, then I am afraid it leaves much to be desired. This issue smacks of prejudice, incompetence and invariably leaves a bad taste and I am sure that anyone would agree that not a single Ackermans-Group customer has to endure this atrocious customer service. I have not experienced such bad customer service in a long time, not even from your less sophisticated competition. I believe that the Ackermans-Group could ill afford such conduct by its staff, not when it strives to position itself as the preferred clothing retailer in South Africa.