@Home Woodlands completely negligent and ***********

On the 10th of June I took my Breville coffee machine into the @Home store in Woodlands for repairs. No water was filtering through the machine. They took my name and number and told me they would be in touch after assessing the machine.

Only on the 25th of June did I get a call from Tshepo at @Home telling me my Breville is too old to fix. They do not have any spares for it. I was then told to take the matter up with head office as I protested. I could not believe the only supplier of Breville machines in SA could not assist me. He gave me a contact email and I confirmed the model name as I wanted to be sure of the details when emailling them.

I contacted Amanda Pretorius who told me that they do have parts for this coffee machine, however, because this specific machine had not been sold in 5 years and longer, the model (as indicated by Tshepo) cannot be sent in for repairs to their nominated repair company in Johannesburg due to the appliance being too old and they cannot guarantee the repairs on it.

I was told to contact a private electrician to determine the issue, then order parts from them, and have my electrician fix it.

After this conversation I was told to fetch my machine from Woodlands. Due to an operation I had on the 19th of June, I am not permitted to drive for 6 weeks so I called @Home and told them I will fetch my machine as soon as possible.

Thereafter I weighed up the options with my husband and we decided that taking a chance with a private electrician would be too expensive an exercise without any guarantees of our machine being fixed.

We took time to explore other coffee machines and ended up spending R8800 on a new Miele machine.

Today, the 4th of July, I got a call from Tshepo at @Home Woodlands, laughingly apologizing that they made a big mistake and assessed the wrong machine. My machine could be fixed at a cost of R1000.

I am terribly upset at the mismanagement that took place in booking my machine at @Home Woodlands for repairs that ended up costing me thousands of unnecessary rands! I would like to put the following questions to @Home management: 1) How will you reimburse me for the R8800 I unnecessarily spent on a new machine due to your mismanagement? I have suffered extreme damages here and I am obviously and justifiably very upset and I am considering my options. 2) How will you ensure this doesn’t happen again? 3) Do you agree that you obviously need to look at formalizing your sign in procedures and processes at your retail outlet?