Delayed delivery and bad service

On 26 November 2017 I placed two online orders at Makro. The first was a pre-order for 22 December, and the second would have been delivered within 2 - 5 working days according to Makro’s order notification. Since I would need these orders for Christmas presents, I arranged my holiday plans accordingly - planning to leave only on 23 December after my order arrives.

After waiting more than two weeks for the second order to be delivered, I e-mailed Makro’s online support to find out when I can expect delivery of my order. The only response after numerous attempts was that they were experiencing high order loads and would do their best to process the order ASAP.

The week before Christmas I still have not received my order and was starting to lose confidence that the pre-order would be delivered in time. On Monday 18 December I phoned Makro’s online support to determine when both my orders will be delivered. The assistant I spoke to said the second order was waiting in Randburg for collection, but have not been arranged by Makro for delivery. She said that I would receive my order on Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. I also asked whether or not my pre-order would be delivered on time, but she could not get hold of Makro Cape Gate for assistance. I asked her to e-mail me their response and phone me when she has an answer, but never heard of her again.

By the end of Wednesday I phoned again since my order still hasn’t been delivered. Makro’s only response was that the order was with the courier and they are unable to confirm when the order will be delivered. Since I needed to be sure of delivery on Friday at the latest, I tried to also contact Makro Cape Gate myself. Their assistance was even worse and I have by this time spent a couple hundred Rand in airtime on waiting for answers and holding on the line. When finally getting hold of an assistant who was able to help, she told me that Makro would only receive stock of the pre-ordered item on 22 December, and would then proceed with delivery of the order.

I have since started to think I misunderstood Makro’s definition of a pre-order and wanted to ensure that I somehow get both my orders the 22nd. After speaking to another assistant, she mentioned that the courier would collect the order on the 22nd and that I would possibly receive the order on that day.

I then decided to contact the courier, Dawnwing, myself to track my parcel for the second order and find out what their ETA is for delivery of the pre-order. According to the telephone assistant the courier was at my house, but I wasn’t available. I found this strange since I have not been contacted by anyone regarding this delivery. I even checked my call history to see whether or not I perhaps missed a call, but I was able to confirm that no one phoned me during that time. I asked the courier to arrange delivery for 14:00 of both orders since I knew I would definitely be at home then.

At about 14:30 I phoned the courier again since there was still no delivery. The lady said that the courier might still arrive later to deliver the second order, but the pre-ordered item still have not been collected from Makro. I then asked her what the possibility is of delivery that day, with which she responded “Makro chose the cheapest delivery option and delivery will take place anytime between 22 and 28 December”. If I had known this I would probably have rather placed my pre-order at a place like Takealot which I know delivers pre-orders on the same day.

If Makro was able to tell me earlier that the order will not be delivered on the day the pre-order is available, I would have been willing to even collect it myself since I knew I had to leave for holiday the next day. I also feel like I have made more than enough attempts to speak to assistants to try ensure I have both my orders before Christmas.

The assistance I received from both Makro and Dawnwing was useless and I was left having to leave for holiday without a Christmas present. At the end of all this I spent hundreds of Rands on cellphone airtime waiting for call assistance. It was also useless to ask the assistant to call me back when they have received feedback, because none of the assistants made an effort to phone me back. The only option for any possible sort of feedback, was to wait on the line for 15 minutes on average.

On Christmas day I tracked my parcels on Dawnwing’s website and saw that the courier was apparently at my house on 23 December, but that, once again, no one contacted me. I can only now arrange for delivery when I get back home.

The service of both Makro and Dawnwing couriers left me with absolutely no confidence in their service and I am appalled at the amount of money I had to spend trying to get some useful assistance from their online assistants. I sincerely hope no one else receives similar terrible service, and if you are planning on doing business with either of these companies: do yourself a favour and don’t hope on any sort decent service.