L.S.

I have been using Makro On-Line for a little while. Experience has been a mediocre 3 out of 5, but more recently my experience joins the other 17 333 customers that have rated Makro service a 1 out of 5, of total ratings of 20 351. That's 85% of rating customers have had "terrible" service from this company. My strong suggestion to the management of Makro On-Line is to shut this service down, as you people are not qualified to operate such a service to the public! I would really like to know if there is an ombudsman monitoring the behaviour of this flourishing industry, as it is obvious that the consumer has to be protected and have an authority to whom the public can turn to. Returns, caused by misinformation/incorrect advertising by Makro take weeks to process and eventually provide a refund. This is tantamount to *****ing from the public. Consider this: The company wrongly advertise a product. (in my case it was an advert for olive oil 1500ml x 6, which turned out to be 250ml x 6 when paid for and eventually delivered). The consumer buys and pays for that product. To find out that that the advert was false, and so a refund is requested. A long drawn-out process of getting the incorrect product back. Sending this back to the supplier. The supplier verifying that the product is legitimate and authorises a refund. The finance department of Makro is then given the go ahead to refund. Eventually a refund could be processed, or a lengthy follow-up process has to be employed by the customer, until at long last a refund is received. Reading some of the 'terrible' rating comments, this process could take months. In the meantime, Makro is sitting with your money, earning interest in a bank account, while you are paying interest on your credit card account, waiting for the refund to come back. Surely this can't be legal!? Legitimate Online service providers, such as Takealot.com have an ordering system that tracks the number of units that are advertised for sale. When the last item on that line is sold, the item is show as 'sold out' and no further sales of those items can take place. Not so with Makro, it seems. My current experience is that the Makro system carries on accepting orders well into the depletion of the available stock. Thereby amassing huge credit funds into their account, with no merchandise available to meet that demand. A very clever way to sit on millions of rand of consumer money, while they try to source the stock to meet that demand or perhaps simply apologise to the trusting customer and enter into yet another long drawn-out refund process, while again they sit with your funds earning interest in their bank account while you have to pay interest on your card account. This just cannot possibly be legal?! I really had no idea of the pathetic service from this institution. Pretty bad yes, but questionably dishonest, is indeed a surprise. The public needs to be warned against this unacceptable behaviour!!