Shame on you Huawei - shady tactics leave a bad taste in the mouth in the run-up to Black Friday ...

If I could give Huawei a negative number of stars, I would! I am disgusted, just like many other people that have complained about Huawei's Black Friday Sale. After getting all excited by the advertising on DSTV, I was registered and waiting as the count-down hit 00. But clicking the BUY button did absolutely nothing!

After hunting around the page I eventually found a tiny text link to the terms and conditions of the sale and lo and behold, you have to watch a video on one of the social media sites in order to find out how to enable the BUY button! Rushing to watch the video, I learn that you have to enter your address in your profile in order for the button to be enabled! OK. I frantically start typing in my address only to get to the suburb field and get told that I need to enter a valid suburb. OK, maybe it did not pick up my suburb - it's not very big - so I'll put in the postal code - it should pick that up. Nope! After multiple attempts, using many different addresses, I gave up. I mean, Sandton does not register as a suburb?

Maybe a different browser? By this stage however, my hopes of getting the phone, watch and laptop combo was fast fading. Three browsers later (one being on my mobile - don't even ask about the mobile site experience) and I throw up my hands in despair - same issue - so not the browser. I go back to the Facebook video to see if I missed something, only to find lots of other disgruntled ex-buyers.

Then I spy a brief message from someone at Huawei - sorry for the inconvenience - we are having issues with the site due to high traffic. Please keep on trying - what? By that stage people were up in arms as the combo was over and a new flash sale had started - this time just the P40 at a third of the price - but only 2!!! I just stopped and started laughing, as it dawned on me that this was all just a massive ****. What a slow, dumb idiot I had been...

It is absolutely disgusting that a huge company like Huawei had stooped to this level. Their contention of high levels of traffic causing the issues with the site is absolute *******. I am a web developer of many years, and site traffic would not cause a button to do nothing. Hovering over the button displayed a message in the browser toolbar - “javaScript:void(0)”, which returns the undefined primitive value - in other words - nothing! Besides, even if there was some sort of magic behind the scenes, was the functionality not tested before the page went live???

Then, just to prove me right, the next sale starts - the bundle again - YES! Hover over the button - it indicates that I can click it - YES!!! However, at the back of my mind something is bothering me. Why is there no indication of how many combo's are up for grabs? Like they did with the previous sale? And...I still did not have an address linked to my profile!

I shrug and click the button anyway - only to be shown the combo - at the original, undiscounted price of R49 999! But the initial page showed the discounted price of R4999... what gives? Was I going to take a chance and possibly get charged R49 999 at the check-out? I don't think so...

I'm sorry Huawei, I was going to switch from Samsung to you guys because of your incredible deals and well reviewed products, but not any more. You have proven to be nefarious, duplicitous and just plain scaly. I don't understand what exactly you were hoping to achieve, but shady tactics like this will only drive potential customers away.

Don't try and hide your underhanded tactics behind "high traffic volumes", you should be brought in front of the Consumer Council for duping your customers in this way. Shame on you!!!