Terrible service at welkom branch

<p>on Wednesday the 3rd of August my wife and myself went and bought a few things at checkers Welkom. We went to pay for the goods at the cashier and she swiped my wife's debit card. The amount went off the account and she received SMS notification for this amount being deducted. The cashier then pointed out that her system was down and that we would have to re-swipe our card as they have not received confirmation of this payment being done. It was a substantial amount of money that would have to be re-swiped. We then asked for the manager for assistance and a man came over who proclaimed to be the manager and promptly told us to re-swipe without explanation of any process of what would take place. We then refused for him to swipe as we were not sure what the process would be. He then contacted the REAL manager. This had already taken 10 minutes. We wanted to leave the store with the goods we had paid for and were then stopped by a security guard who accused us of *****ing the goods which we had paid for. When the real manager eventually arrived 25 minutes later he was really of no assistance. His people s****s were terrible as we kept our cool and just questioned him that what would happen if we didn't have that amount of money in our accounts for a re-swipe. He could not communicate to me and was adamant to speak Afrikaans whilst I spoke English to him. Surely if someone manages a large franchise store he should be able to communicate in English. He then eventually took the debit card to another cash point without calling us to go with him and went ahead to swipe the card. He said the amount would be paid back into the account within 5 minutes. This has not happened. When I asked him who would pay for the bank statement which he would need to refund us in case this does not go through he said he can't help me with that. Surely checkers and the bank have an agreement on this type of issue and cannot keep the customer liable for a fault on there behalf. When we received the slip we were walking out the store and a security guard poked his two-way radios antennae into my wife's face. I then re approached the manager who stood and watched this happen and he could not explain to me how this is fine. I then told him that he should sort the security out at which he did nothing about this. I also said that if he doesn't do anything that a customer like me could very well take action upon such a poor security person and manager himself. My wife and I then promptly left still without any proof that we would receive our money back. This was a really unpleasant experience and from now on we will rather go and shop at a store which is maybe a bit more expensive but we know that when there is such a problem the manager and the staff will be more professional about the way they go about assisting the customer. I would also advise head office to maybe send the manager on some sort of customer service course as well as how to manage any type of conflict which may occur.</p> <p>So so all in all, a very unsatisfactory experience and if this is the case for this store I cannot see myself or any of my family ever shopping there again.</p>